Alterra

Alterra is the main Dutch centre of expertise on rural areas, employing over 500 staff members. It is part of Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen UR) and combines all expertise on rural areas and their sustainable use. Alterra engages in strategic and applied research to support policymaking and management at the local, national and international level in a.o. innovative and interdisciplinary research on complex problems for rural areas.

Alterra’s research effort include tasks in the field of biodiversity conservation, monitoring and EO observation studies. Related projects are among others SynBiosys, BIOHAB (EU FP5), PEENHAB (EEA), BioPress (EU-FP5), Alternet (NoE-FP6), EBONE, BioBio (FP7) and The Belgium-Dutch Habistat project.

Staff involved

Rob Jongman
 

Rob H.G. Jongman PhD is a landscape ecologist. In the period 1999-2000 he has been secretary and co-ordinator of the Expertise Group on Environmental Sciences of Wageningen UR. He is the designer of the first studies on European Ecological networks (1989-1991) and was coordinating the BioHab project. He is coordinator of EBONE and co-lead of GEO BON, the global task on harmonisation in biodiversity monitoring

Sander Mucher

Sander (C.A.) Mücher PhD is head of the team Earth Observation at Alterra. He is a senior researcher in Remote Sensing & GIS. He did his PhD in 2009, entitled ‘Geo-spatial modelling and monitoring of European landscapes and habitats using remote sensing and field surveys’. He was project co-ordinator of the EU project PELCOM with emphasis was on land use monitoring using low resolution satellite data. He is involved in many European activities integrating habitat, land cover and landscape monitoring such as BIOPRESS, BIOHAB, EBONE, HABISTAT, ECOCHANGE and HELM.

Marion Bogers
 

Marion Bogers is responsible for the management and communication of various European projects (EBONE, BIOHAB, BIOBIO, VOLANTE). She often functions as contact person for these projects and is involved communication activities like newsletters, posters, leaflets and website. She has long experience with organising and facilitating, workshops and conferences. She is involved in project management, communication activities and in the development of a European system for habitat monitoring and surveillance. She has given several trainings on this subject throughout Europe.  

Bob Bunce
 

Bob Bunce BSc, PhD, FRSA is a senior Landscape Ecologist at Alterra Wageningen UR with over 30 years of experience of vegetation land use research. He is an expert European field botanist. He has developed quantitative approaches to vegetation analysis and environmental classification that enables strategic ecological survey to be carried out for large regions using statistical procedures. He led the Britsh Countryside Survey from its statrt until 2000. He was scientific leader of the FP5 BioHab project.
 

Laure Roupioz
 

Laure Roupioz is an agricultural engineer and holds a master in Geo-Information Sciences. She works as researcher in the Centre for Geo-Information at Alterra Wageningen UR since 2008 and contributed in projects aiming to explore environmental issues using GIS and remote sensing techniques at local, European or worldwide scale. In this regard, she is involved in two international projects (CEOP-AEGIS and China Drought) focusing on monitoring and predicting drought events in China. Over the past years, she focused on describing and assessing characteristics like biodiversity, socio-economics, territorial cohesion in the framework of European projects (e.g. ETC-LUSI, EBONE).