Ph.D. thesis - Remote Sensing Tools for Detecting and Quantifying Lianas and Trees at the Tropical Dry Forest.

This project was the central part of my Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Dr. Arturo Sanchez at the University of Alberta. The NSERC of the Government of Canada funded it through the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Overall, my thesis sought to create interdisciplinary approaches that help evaluate the local variability, detect the presence, and quantify the contribution of lianas and trees in the Tropical Dry Forest (TDF). These approaches were created by linking fields such as remote sensing, plant physiology, ecology, and modeling. Specifically, my thesis dissertation was focused on four research chapters:

1. Explore the temporal variability of leaf temperature of lianas and trees at the canopy.
2. Assess the discrimination of liana and tree leaves using visible-near infrared and longwave infrared spectra.
3. Evaluate the prediction of leaf traits of lianas and trees using Partial Least-Square Regression (PLSR) models based on leaf reflectance or wavelet spectra.
4. Evaluate the relationship between fractal geometry and tree-stands metrics on point clouds of trees.

My thesis received a Doctoral Dissertation Award 2021 by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Alberta presented in recognition of outstanding achievement in a doctoral dissertation.

Results of this my thesis have already been published (Guzmán et al. 2018, Guzmán et al. 2018, Guzmán et al. 2018, and Guzmán and Sánchez‐Azofeifa 2021). If you are interested in my dissertation thesis, you can download it from here.