Contact Information
Email: dtrobinson@uwaterloo.ca
Phone: 519-888-4567 x41789
Location: EV1 314
Associate Professor | Geography and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment
Derek completed his PhD in Terrestrial Ecosystem Management in 2009 at the University of Michigan and went on to be a post doctorate researcher at both the University of Michigan and the University of Edinburgh. He then joined the Department of Geography and Environmental Management in 2012 at the University of Waterloo with interests that lie at the center of land use, land management, and the carbon cycle.
To advance science in these areas of interests, Derek is currently using remotely piloted aircraft to remotely sense agriculture and urban areas using thermal, multi-spectral, and LiDAR sensors. Collected data are used for a variety of purposes that include: quantifying natural processes (e.g., erosion, carbon storage) at the scale of individual property parcels or agricultural fields; calibrate and validate models of natural processes; and among other interests, generate 3D immersive environments for visualization and knowledge transfer.
Graduate Supervision: Land-use and land-cover change, land-management and the carbon cycle, game engines for natural science, erosion, agent-based modelling, and geographical information systems.
Selected Publications:
- Meinen, B., and D.T. Robinson. (2021) Agricultural erosion modelling: evaluating USLE and WEPP field-scale erosion estimates using UAV time-series data. Environmental Modelling and Software, 137
- Meinen, B., and D.T. Robinson.(2020) Mapping erosion and deposition in an agricultural landscape: optimization of UAV image acquisition schemes for SfM-MVS. Remote Sensing of Environment, 239
- Hamberg, J., Fraser, R.A., Robinson, D.T., Trant, A.J., and S.D. Murphy. (2020) Thermal imaging relative surface temperature as an indicator of plant species diversity and restoration progress. Ecological Indicators, 113