During his master’s Soil, Water, Atmosphere, Lammert Kooistra specialised in remote sensing and geo-information systems (GIS). He went on to obtain his PhD on a study on detecting heavy metals in the flood plains using satellite images. He obtained his PhD at Radboud University. He started working as a researcher at Alterra, currently known as Wageningen Environmental Research, in 2002. In 2005 he became an assistant professor at the laboratory for Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing. Since 2016 he is an associate professor. “In a Suske & Wiske comic (a well-known Dutch and Belgian comic series, ed.), professor Barabas discovers the sound tap, allowing him to communicate with plants. For nature to flourish and produce more food sustainably, I want to understand when a plant feels at ease in its environment. This requires more knowledge on plants, and the technological developments offer us access to this knowledge.’
Despite the efforts many farmers make to keep their meadows hospitable, pasture birds experience difficulties in the Netherlands. Wageningen researchers developed a method to determine what the birds need (such as whether or not to mow the grass) using drone images and self-learning image recognition software. Moreover, ecologists deploy drones…