Coyhaique, in the Aysén Region of Patagonia, will host a symposium focused on the application of remote sensing technologies to analyze forest dynamics, fire behavior, and sustainable management. The session will address the use of satellite imagery, UAVs, LiDAR, and artificial intelligence to improve forest monitoring, assess fire risk, and support decision-making for prevention and restoration.

About the conveners

Laura Alonso

Trained as a forest engineer, Laura Alonso has developed her PhD focusing on the usage of multiple remote sensing datasets to better understand forest dynamics and fire behavior. Currently, she is undertaking a postdoctoral position aimed at enhancing the design and implementation of sustainable forest management and conservation strategies, with a particular emphasis on wildfire prevention. Although based at the University of Vigo, Laura's work has an international scope. In the past year, she conducted her research at the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (Portugal), and this year she is continuing her work at the Bushfire Research Centre (Australia).

Ana Novo

Dr. Ana Novo is postdoctoral research at Misión Biolóxica de Galicia (MBG-CSIC). Her research focuses on remote sensing applied to forest fire ecology, with emphasis on vegetation structure, fire risk modelling, landscape resilience, and severity analysis. She holds a Ph.D in Applied Geotechnologies to Construction, Energy and Industry from the University of Vigo (2022, Cum Laude, International Mention). Overall, she has contributed to the advancement of experimental techniques for remote sensing of vegetation, LiDAR and multispectral data processing, fire risk and severity assessment, and pre- and post-fire management support. According to Scopus, she has authored 19 peer-reviewed articles, with over 312 citations and an h-index of 9.

Midhun Mohan

Dr. Midhun “Mikey” Mohan is the CEO of Ecoresolve, a California-based research think tank advancing remote sensing and AI applications for coastal ecosystem restoration. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and has over 10 years of experience in UAVs, satellite imagery, LiDAR, and machine learning for forestry and blue carbon ecosystems. Mikey has published 70+ papers with over 2,500 citations, and led coastal conservation projects across the EU, USA, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, and co-developed open-source tools and R packages for tree-level analysis and climate–ecosystem modeling.

Fabian Fassnacht

Trained as a forester, Fabian Fassnacht’s research over the last 15 years focused on applying active and passive remote sensing data to characterize and map vegetation using machine-learning as well as physics-based approaches. Target variables included vegetation species, traits and structure which were derived from a wide array of remote and proximal sensing sensors, including airborne hyperspectral data, airborne and terrestrial laser scanning data and (time-series of) multispectral satellite data. Important application fields include the estimation of forest biomass and fuels, mapping of vegetation species, as well as deriving biochemical and biophysical traits in grasslands and forest areas.