After successful completion of the course, students are able to judge the utility of common remote sensing methods for monitoring of selected global cycles. The latter includes the carbon and water cycle, and tipping elements with respect to climate change. In addition, students obtain or extend the ability to find relevant scientific literature, to document it and to present it.
The course covers following topics - Introduction to Climate and the greenhouse gas effect, carbon and water cycle - Overview on available sensors for global monitoring and detectable parameters - global datasets from remote sensing and selected parameter retrieval methods. Further on databases of scientific literature as wells as satellites will be explained. Calculations based on global datasets will be made using a GIS software.
As part of the exam, each participant holds a presentation (in English) about a subject related to the topics of the lecture. The exact subjects of the presentations are selected together with the lecturer. Example topics: glacier changes, forest fires, flooding, desertification, landuse change ...
Submission of the documentation of the literature survey, contribution to discussion of application examples (assignment of example in advance), presentation of results from the literature survey; written: revision of the content of the lecture (multiple choice, open questions).