Dendoncker CV
Keynote Presentations from the 5th ALTER-Net Summer School, Peyresq 5 - 14 September 2010
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Speaker: Nicolas Dendoncker nicolas.dendoncker -at- fundp.ac.be Department of Geography, FUNDP, Académie Louvain, Namur, Belgium Personal homepage |
Title of the talk: Prospective modelling of land use change (pdf: 7MB)
Biosketch
Research:The main focus of my present research at the academy Louvain (FUNDP - Namur), is on developing agent based models (ABM) of land use and environmental change in the context of the EU-funded ECOCHANGE project and the belgian state funded (belspo) VOTES (Valuation of Terrestrial Ecosystem Services) project, due to start early 2010, for which I am the principal investigator. These models are combined with the development of scenarios to explore the response of individuals and society to different drivers of future environmental change. Participatory approaches are implemented and stakeholders are involved from the beginning to the end of the project. The impacts of these landscape changes on ecosystem services are assessed and sustainable development pathways are proposed. In the VOTES project, ecosystem services will be explicitly valued and quantified.
My research at the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change and Sustainability (CECS), University of Edinburgh, focused on modelling land use change and its impacts on the environment (e.g. on soil organic carbon sequestration, biodiversity and other ecosystem services) in the context of a number of EU and national research projects (ALARM, FRAGILE, MULTIMODE, SWECIA...). I have used a variety of spatial-statistical techniques as well as rule-based environmental models. I have also developed, in collaboration with other researchers, a model to downscale land use data and scenarios. In general, I am interested in uncertainty and scale issues, for example, uncertainties in model outputs that arise from scaling or using poor quality datasets.
Teaching:At Edinburgh University, I have developed, coordinated and tought courses related to geoinformatics and environmental modelling, within the MsC in GIS programme. Here at UCLouvain - Namur, I am in charge of several courses related to cartography and GIS.
