I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation. My research and teaching activities concentrate on the application of satellite image time series for the understanding, mapping, and monitoring of dynamic natural resources. I predominantly analyze changes in agricultural and natural vegetation cover to infer relevant information. This information can then be applied for improved understanding of the effects of environmental change (e.g. climate), or for more efficient natural resource management. Besides a direct focus on societally-relevant applications, I also have a more fundamental interest in assessing the potential of new satellite sensors, particularly those with a high repeat frequency, for monitoring vegetation seasonality at fine spatial scales. My main focus areas include:

  1. vegetation phenology, including at fine spatial resolution;
  2. agricultural drought monitoring and prediction, for example in the framework of index insurance programs;
  3. interaction between livestock and the environment in rangelands.

Before joining the University of Twente in 2009, I obtained two MSc's and a PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. The MSc's were obtained in the fields of 'Tropical Land Use' and 'Geo-information Science' in 2001. My PhD was on the use of satellite data for soil erosion studies, and was completed in 2007. Between 2007 and 2009, I worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Ispra, Italy).

Expertise

  • Earth and Planetary Sciences

    • Time Series
    • Model
    • Vegetation
    • Sentinel-2
    • Datum
    • Investigation
    • Estimate
    • Area

Organisations

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation. My research and teaching activities concentrate on the application of satellite image time series for the understanding, mapping, and monitoring of dynamic natural resources. I predominantly analyze changes in agricultural and natural vegetation cover to infer relevant information. This information can then be applied for improved understanding of the effects of environmental change (e.g. climate), or for more efficient natural resource management. Besides a direct focus on societally-relevant applications, I also have a more fundamental interest in assessing the potential of new satellite sensors, particularly those with a high repeat frequency, for monitoring vegetation seasonality at fine spatial scales. My main focus areas include:

  1. vegetation phenology, including at fine spatial resolution;
  2. agricultural drought monitoring and prediction, for example in the framework of index insurance programs;
  3. interaction between livestock and the environment in rangelands.

Before joining the University of Twente in 2009, I obtained two MSc's and a PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. The MSc's were obtained in the fields of 'Tropical Land Use' and 'Geo-information Science' in 2001. My PhD was on the use of satellite data for soil erosion studies, and was completed in 2007. Between 2007 and 2009, I worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Ispra, Italy).

Publications

2025

From drought to aridification: land‐cover fingerprints of a drying Chile (2025)Earth's Future, 13(12). Article e2025EF006744. Zambrano, F., Vrieling, A., Meza, F., Duran‐Llacer, I., Fernández, F., Venegas‐González, A., Raab, N. & Craven, D.https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006744SoySA10: National 10-m soybean maps for South Africa from 2018 to 2025 (2025)[Dataset Types › Dataset]. Zenodo. Huang, X., Vrieling, A., Dou, Y., Muthoni, F., Nyamugama, A., Adeyemi, A., Newby, T. & Nelson, A.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17569053A macroscale evapotranspiration benchmark based on spatial and temporal enhancements to the Budyko framework (2025)Journal of hydrology, 661. Article 133625. Zhang, L., Vrieling, A., Marshall, M. & Nelson, A.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.133625Temperature shocks and stock returns in Brazil: a spatio-temporal approach to estimating the risk premium (2025)Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment (E-pub ahead of print/First online). Barasal Morales, A., Laurini, M. P. & Vrieling, A.https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2025.2572465Opposite effects of temperature and precipitation on vegetation growth onset in Africa (2025)Agricultural and forest meteorology, 371. Article 110604. Shi, S., Yang, P., Vrieling, A. & van der Tol, C.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110604Divergent crop mapping accuracies across different field types in smallholder farming regions (2025)International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (JAG), 139. Article 104559. Huang, X., Vrieling, A., Dou, Y., Li, X. & Nelson, A.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2025.104559Risk assessment from space: Integrating satellite-derived insights for ESG financial decisions (2025)Finance Research Letters, 76. Article 106951. Morales, A. B., Laurini, M. P. & Vrieling, A.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2025.106951Vegetation optimal temperature modulates global vegetation season onset shifts in response to warming climate (2025)Communications Earth & Environment, 6(1). Article 203. Shi, S., Yang, P., Vrieling, A. & van der Tol, C.https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02186-4PhenoCam Dataset v3.0: Vegetation Phenology from Digital Camera Imagery, 2000-2023 (2025)[Dataset Types › Dataset]. ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. Zimmerman, O., Young, A. M., Milliman, T., Hufkens, K., Ballou, K., Coffey, C., Begay, K., Fell, M., Javadian, M., Post, A. K. & Vrieling, A.https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2389PhenoCam Dataset v3.0: Digital Camera Imagery from the PhenoCam Network, 2000-2023 (2025)[Dataset Types › Dataset]. ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. Ballou, K., Vladich, Z., Young, A. M., Milliman, T., Hufkens, K., Coffey, C., Begay, K., Fell, M., Javadian, M., Post, A. K. & Vrieling, A.https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2364

Research profiles

Since 2009 I teach in the Faculty ITC, and prior to that I taught at Wageningen University (2001-2006). I have contributed to a wide variety of courses, generally for international classrooms. My teaching activities focus on the application of satellite image time series for the understanding, mapping, and monitoring of dynamic natural resources. These activities comprise:

  • lecturing in courses on remote sensing, environmental monitoring (mostly related to vegetation), and natural resource management;
  • design and coordination of courses related to e.g. remote sensing of vegetation phenology, drought monitoring, natural resource management;
  • design and supervision of case studies for challenge-based learning;
  • development of online courses in the frameworks of FAO E-learning, the EU-funded GeoNetC project, and the online MSc-programme iGEON;
  • supervision of >40 MSc students for their Master's thesis (besides PhD supervision);
  • individual mentoring in the MSE programme to facilitate students in defining and managing their own learning goals and pathways.

Affiliated study programs

Courses academic year 2025/2026

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Address

University of Twente

Langezijds (building no. 19), room 1125
Hallenweg 8
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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