In September 2024 the 5th edition of the Sensing Mountains Summer School took place.
Once again, it was a great setup at the Obergurgl University Center within the beautiful Ötztal valley in Tyrol, Austria. More than 40 participants, notably PhD students, interested in close-range sensing techniques in Alpine terrain joined from all over the globe. A rich program of keynotes was given by
- Prof. Jana Eichel: Go or grow? Moving mountain slopes meet shifting mountain plants
- Prof. Norbert Pfeifer: 3D Point Clouds, Laserscanning and Environmental Mapping/Monitoring
- Prof. Lukas Winiwarter: AI in 3D - Deep Learning on Topographic Point Cloud Data: Methods, Applications, and Trends
- Dr. Josefine Umlauft: Unraveling - Cryoseismological Records with Machine Learning
- Prof. Daniel Czerwonka-Schröder: Permanent terrestrial LiDAR monitoring - state of the art and perspectives
- Dr. Carlos Cabo: 3DFin: 3D Forest inventory
A lecture was given by Prof. Roderik Lindenbergh and Prof. Katharina Anders on Open Source Scientific Software for 3D/4D Point Cloud Analysis and fostered discussion on latest methods of near-continuous 3D observation.
Together with Prof. Daniel Czerwonka-Schröder, we supervised an assignment on low-cost permanent laser scanning. We investigated how a Livox Avia can be set up for geomorphic monitoring, and how to automatically process and analyze point cloud time series with py4dgeo. Great job by the group of handling different processing steps for more than 50 point clouds within only two days’ time!
Our PhD student Jiapan Wang participated in another group assignment on multi-temporal 3D point cloud analysis of peat erosion in the Rotmoos valley. Fresh point clouds of the area of interest were acquired by terrestrial and uncrewed laser scanning. Then the team implemented co-registration of historical and fresh point clouds. The identification and quantification of erosion of peat bogs were implemented. What a week!
The final presentations of all assignments showed what cool results can be achieved by a group of committed early career scientists focusing on a joint objective - including intensive sessions of tackling issues with new data and methods. Stay tuned, some of the work may be published in next year's conference season.
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We thank all participants, all keynote speakers, all colleagues involved in co-organization and especially head of the summer school Prof. Martin Rutzinger! We are further thankful for the financial support by the COST association under COST action CA20118 (3DForEcoTech).