M. Pilar Martín
Principle Investigator
M. Pilar Martín is professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and director of the Environmental Remote Sensing and Spectroscropy Laboratory (SpecLab) since 2007. She is a Geographer whose special interest is the use of Geographic Information Technologies (remote sensing and GIS) for environmental applications and studies. Her main research field is the remote sensing of vegetation, principally developing and improving remote sensing based products to estimate key biophysical variables within the context of global change and precision agriculture. She has also worked in wildfire prevention and mapping. She has coordinated a large number of research projects funded by national or international (mainly EU) institutions and collaborated as an international expert for NASA and ESA funded research activities. She has supervised and/or co-supervised doctoral theses, bachelor´s and master’s thesis, mainly in cooperation with the University of Alcalá where she was associate professor from 1997 to 2011 and still collaborates as an instructor for post-graduate master courses.
Javier Martínez-Vega
Principle Investigator
Javier Martínez-Vega is a Geographer and scientific researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) since 1989. He is the head of Multi-scalar Geographical Analysis of Global Change research group, which has just renewed its seal of Excellence in the last external evaluation of CSIC Groups. His main research field is the study of the sustainability of terrestrial, coastal and marine protected areas and their surroundings, considering a transversal approach that takes into account the environmental, economic, social, and governance dimensions. He also collaborates with the SpecLab team to analyze the human risk of forest fires. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Alcalá between 1989 and 2000. He was Vice President of the Spanish Association of Remote Sensing and President of the Geographical Information Technologies group (Spanish Association of Geographers).
David Riaño
Emeritus researcher
David Riaño specializes in environmental applications and remote sensing. He has analyzed information from the local to the global scale validating field sampling with Lidar, optical and thermal remote sensing data; and GIS/modeling tools to assess the carbon budget, biogeochemical cycles and climate change. NASA, European Union and the Spanish Ministry for Research funded his research that relies on collaborations among an interdisciplinary team, built from relationships established through research institutions, not only in Spain but in USA, Australia, Canada, Chile, China and the European Union. Despite being diagnosed with ALS in 2009, he is still an active member of our research team.
Mª Dolores Raya-Sereno
Post-doc
María Dolores Raya-Sereno is a Postdoctoral Researcher at
SpecLab-CSIC. She received the B.Sc. in Environmental Science from the University of Córdoba in 2014, the
M.Sc. in Planning and Management of Territorial and Local Development from the University of Seville in 2015, and the Ph.D. in Agro-Environmental Technology for Sustainable Agriculture from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in 2023. From 2016 to 2018, she was a Research Assistant at the Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology (CSIC),
where she joined the Irrigation and Crop Ecophysiology research group. Her recent research interest include remote sensing and its application in vegetation monitoring. She has different publications in the field of management and precision agriculture, and she has participated in different national and international congress and research projects related to environmental protection.
Lucía Casillas
Technician
Lucía Casillas is a Chemistry graduate by Complutense University of Madrid, with special interest in the analytical chemistry of the environment. She works in the data collection in field campagins and further preparation and chemical analysis of vegetation samples to derive information on key plant trais such as pigments and nutrient contents.
Meet also our External Collaborators
Rosario González-Cascón
Rosario is a chemist and scientific researcher at Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). She is developing methodologies for the determination of biochemical indicators of physiological plant status in forest ecosystems. Since 2009, she is collaborating with SpecLab in many research projects and activities, specially in the development of empirical models for the estimation of essential vegetation traits based on their spectral properties. She complement the research group with analytical facilities for plant nutrient status diagnosis. She has participated in numerous research projects and in the European Network for the monitoring of forest ecosystem functioning in Spain (ICP-Forests).
and Former SpecLab members
Post-docs
Lara Vilar
University of Alcalá
Javier Pacheco
Max Planck Institute
Marta Gallardo
UNED
David Rodriguez
University of Málaga
Gorka Mendiguren
National Museum of Denmark
Vicente Burchard
ICA-CSIC
Technicians and research assistants
Jesús Ramo
Research Assistant
Pilar Echavarría
GIS specialist
Israel Gómez
GIS specialist
Javier Becerra
Research Assistant
Etel Tafur
Research Assistant
Jesus Garrido
Research Assistant
Elia Durá
Research Assistant