GFZ German research centre for geo sciences

Dr. Viola Helen Alejandra Heinrich

Research Interests:

With a background is in geography and climate science I have a passion for understanding our world's systems around us.

The climate and biodiversity emergencies are the biggest challenges we are facing today and we need collective action to tackle these complex, largely human-caused crisises. During my studies I was fascinated by how we can use remote sensing dataset to help answer some of the greatest questions we ask about our environmental systems and how the evidence from these datasets can help to build knowledge and inform policy. This is especially important as the implementation of the Paris Agreement will require collective action from scientists, policy makers, politicians, private industries and local and indigenous people. 

During my PhD at the University of Bristol, I applied various remote sensing products to quantify the aboveground carbon accumulation in tropical recovery forests. The results help to improve estimations of the tropical carbon sink. Using similar approaches, I am now turning my attention to European forests during my post-doc at the GFZ. 

One of my latest work involved using Google Earth Engine to develop a user-friendly app on secondary forest regrowth in the Brazilian Amazon. We hope expand our app, Re:Growth, as more remote-sensing based studies on carbon accumulation in recovery forests becomes available. 

Career:

2023 - present: Postdoc, German Research Center for Geoscience (GFZ) Potsdam

2012 - 2023: Postdoc, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, UK

Education:

2023: PhD in Physical Geography, University of Bristol, UK

2018: MSc in Applied Meteorology, University of Reading, UK

2017: BSc in Geography with Environmental Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK

Projects:

2023 - 2025 WRI Land and Carbon Lab, role: member

2023 - 2025 Mitigate+, role: member

2020 - 2023 ESA RECCAP2, role: member

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