Topic: Extraction of Large-scale Forest Parameters by InSAR and Monitoring of Change and Interference

Speaker: Lei Yang, the National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

Time: 9:30-10:30 p.m., March 23, 2023 (Thursday)

Venue: S927, Mong Man Wai Technology Building, Tsinghua University

Live Streaming at Official Weibo of the Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University              Tencent Conference (ID: 990-360-740)

Introduction to the Lecture:

Climate change and the deterioration of ecosystems and the environment seriously threaten the living environment of human beings. Modern imaging radar satellites have become an important means to measure the terrestrial ecological environment and its changes, such as forest vegetation in the carbon cycle. This report, with a focus on models and algorithm, introduces the application of the new system InSAR in forest remote sensing in the following two research areas: large-scale measurement of forest height by InSAR and quantitative monitoring of forest change and interference by InSAR. The report will also discuss the deep integration of radar satellites and lidar satellites to produce large-scale, full-coverage tree height and biomass products and services. The technical methods involved in the report provide a new perspective and direction for the forest vegetation application of InSAR and lidar satellites at home and abroad (such as LUTAN-1 and terrestrial carbon satellites in China, and NISAR and GEDI in the United States).

Profile of the Speaker:

Lei Yang, winner of the National Young Talents Program, is a researcher at the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2016, he received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer science from the Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. From 2016 to 2018, he was engaged in an honorary postdoctoral program in the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and from 2019 to 2021, he worked as an associate research scientist in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences of the California Institute of Technology. Focusing on electromagnetic scattering mechanism model, radar signal processing and remote sensing parameter inversion algorithm, Dr. Lei has deeply studied for many years in the field of microwave radar environmental remote sensing, especially in the fields of new system InSAR, PolInSAR and TomoSAR remote sensing of forests, snow, polar ice sheets and planetary subsurface layers. In 2022, Dr. Lei served as the chief scientist of the national key research and development plan "Earth Observation and Navigation" of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China. He has presided over and participated in many NASA projects and involved in major satellite missions such as NISAR and Europa Clipper. He has been elected NASA NESSF Fellow and NPP Fellow, been awarded the NISAR Satellite Mission Team Award by the NASA, and acted as data project Principal Investigator (PI) of Japan Space Agency (JAXA) and German Space Agency (DLR). The software developed by him has been widely used by research institutions such as NASA. He is also Senior Member of IEEE, deputy editor-in-chief of IEEE TGRS, a top international journal of remote sensing.