Placement at Northern Arizona University
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From September to December 2024, I had the privilege of joining Professor Andrew Richardson’s lab at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona. The group, based in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (ECOSS), studies how global change affects terrestrial ecosystems and how vegetation interacts with the climate. They’re also behind the PhenoCam Network, which deploys digital cameras across the globe to track vegetation phenology.
My research uses traffic cameras from England’s highways to monitor phenology, so my time with the NAU lab was a perfect match. I came in with a background in data science, image processing, and deep learning. Still, I learned about the ecological side of things—especially the ins and outs of using cameras for studying vegetation. I also discovered some surprising uses for phenocams, like detecting fog or measuring snow depth, which showed how versatile the same site’s repeated digital photography can be.
One of the standout experiences was heading into the field with other PhD students. We installed instruments like sap flow sensors, dendrometers, and UV light sensors. I understood how sensor data and image-based monitoring combine to deepen our understanding of ecosystem processes (more about that adventure here).
At the end of my placement, I presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2024, the world’s biggest Earth and space science conference. My talk, “Optimising Traffic Camera Networks for Long-Term Phenological Monitoring via Advanced Image Clustering Techniques,” highlighted how photogrammetry, graph networks, image detection, and instance segmentation can improve the precision of image clustering and alignment. It felt like the perfect way to wrap up my visit.
Outside the lab, I fell in love with the striking landscapes of northern Arizona. Wandering among the golden aspen trees in fall, gazing up at the San Francisco Peaks, and visiting landmarks like the Grand Canyon were unforgettable experiences. I’m deeply grateful to the CDT in Geospatial Systems for making this placement possible and to my supervisors at Newcastle and Nottingham for supporting me throughout. Above all, thank you to Professor Richardson and everyone at NAU for their warm welcome and invaluable guidance. I’m back in Newcastle with new knowledge, exciting collaborations, and treasured memories of my time in Flagstaff.