Heiko BalzterProf. Heiko Balzter received the Dipl.-Ing.Agr. (equivalent to M.Sc.) and the Dr.Agr. (Ph.D.) degrees from Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany, in 1994 and 1998, respectively. He is a Research Professor and the Director of the Centre for Landsape and Climate Research at the University of Leicester, Leicester, U.K and Official Development Assistance (ODA) Programme Leader in the NERC National Centre for Earth Observation. Before joining the University of Leicester, he was Head of the Section for Earth Observation at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Monks Wood, U.K., where he worked from 1998 to 2006. His research interests include interactions of the water cycle with ecosystems across multiple spatial and temporal scales, pressures from climate change and land use change on ecosystem services, and the effects of spatial patterns and processes upon biological populations in evolving 3-D landscapes. Prof. Balzter holds the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2011) and the Royal Geographical Society's Cuthbert Peek Award 'for advancing geographical knowledge of human impact through earth observation' (2015). He received the President's Cup for the Best Paper Annual Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society Conference (2009). Prof. Balzter chairs the BESS-EO working group on biodiversity, ecosystem services and Earth Observation, is a member of the NERC Future Landscapes Scoping Group, and UK representative on the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Programme Board. He is leading the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service for the UK, which produces the CORINE land cover map. In the Forests 2020 project he is leading the Forest Cover Change Detection task. In GLOBBIOMASS, he is in charge of the regional case studies work package. He is Principal Investigator of the European Centre of Excellence in Earth Observation Research Training GIONET. Read More Read Less