Nicholas Pontone
I am a PhD student, supervised by Dr. Koreen Millard and Dr. Derek Mueller. My research focuses on the remote sensing of boreal peatlands, particularly in the context of wildfires. During my MSc in Geography at Carleton University, I developed a multi-sensor hierarchical classification framework for mapping peatland sub-classes in the Canadian boreal forest
Currently, I am investigating how Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interacts with peatland ecosystems to develop improved soil moisture models. I am also exploring the use of Interferometric SAR (InSAR) to estimate the depth of burn following wildfires in managed peatlands. By linking satellite observations with field measurements through radiative transfer modeling, I aim to improve our understanding of these interactions by disentangling the confounding effects of soil moisture, vegetation, and surface roughness on the observed backscatter signal. This research will enhance our ability to retrieve biophysical parameters from peatlands, improving our understanding of greenhouse gas fluxes, fire susceptibility, and post-fire emissions.