Environment

Our commitment to the protection of natural resources is one of CERENA's central value. We characterize, monitor and model freshwater systems, oceans, vegetation and ecosystems and extra-terrestrial planetary surfaces.

Our scientists contribute to develop tools for the sustainable management of groundwater within the Mediterranean region through stochastic electrical resistivity inversion and ocean-aquifer interaction modelling using deep learning. We characterize the ocean using seismic oceanography methods, to produce high-resolution images of temperature and salinity spatial distributions. We also use deep learning methods to automatically classify the sediment type based on multibeam backscatter data. Through remote sensing technology, we are mapping one of the main national reserves of phytodiversity in the Serra da Estrela Natural Park (PharmaStar). These monitoring methods can capture the effects of climate change in vegetation, and are used to enhance environmental preservation. 

Our goal in the Environment Group is to contribute to a cleaner and greener future. On land, we work to restore degraded mining areas – in the north and south of Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria and Sweden. Combining terrain modelling techniques with UAVs and geostatistical tools, we assess the risk for the environment and the people. Offshore, we want to make a difference in the fight against ocean pollution: our scientists developed an automatic system for the identification of marine floating plastic litter, combining Earth Observation data with Artificial Intelligence. 

We aim to improve the capacities for forecasting, early warning, and assessing vulnerabilities and impacts of natural and anthropic hazards such as seismic, volcanic, droughts, desertification, floods and technological hazards related with urban, agricultural and industrial activities. Our scientists are involved in understanding and strengthening disaster risk governance under the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. International cooperation is a central value of our center, and we are working to deploy a network of broadband seismic sensors in Angola and São Tomé e Príncipe (TSHAPS), to improve the mitigation of seismic risk.