Franziska Müller, M.Sc.

My research interests and work focus on understanding the impact of forest disturbances such as fire, wind, drought, and insect outbreaks on forest decline. The lack of long-term observational records linking forest stress and mortality to specific causes of disturbance makes it difficult to attribute these events to climate change. I am working on using remote sensing data at high spatial and temporal resolutions, along with machine learning techniques, to distinguish between different types of disturbances. I am currently developing deep-learning models to identify large wind throw and bark beetle outbreaks in a case-study region in North America using Sentinel 2 reflectance data. The study evaluates the relevance of different features for distinguishing between these two disturbance types.