PANGEOS COST Action CA22136 Training School “Remote sensing methods on determining evapotranspiration” 13.04.2026-18.04.2026 in Nitra, Slovakia
“Remote sensing methods on determining evapotranspiration”
Pre-lectures (online): 23.03.2026
13.04.2026-18.04.2026 AgroBioTech, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, Slovakia
The school will offer both frontal lectures and tutorials/practicals to the topics:
- FAO Kc Crop Coefficient Estimation of Crop Water Needs
- Remote Sensing Indexes for Crop Water Stress Estimation
- Calculation of Crop Water Stress Index for Trees
- Introduction to the concepts of Surface Energy Balance
- Two-source energy balance model and PyTSEB
- SCOPE (Soil Canopy Observation, Photochemistry, and Energy fluxes)
The training school will be hosted by the PANGEOS WG Representatives Anshu Rastogi and Michal Antala and as Local Hosts MC and WG members Prof. Marian Brestic; Dr. Marek Zivcak, and Andrej Halabuk.
This Training School is dedicated to young researchers but also to others interested in the topic.
Financial support will be provided mainly to PhD students, taking into account the motivation, gender balance and geographic diversity of the affiliations.
PANGEOS will fund up to 25 participants from COST member countries, Near Neighbor Countries, COST Cooperating Member Countries or COST Partner Countries. International participants may apply but will have to be self-funded, per COST Rules.
Interested PhD students and early-stage researchers affiliated to COST countries are invited to apply! Selection will be based on CV, motivation, geographical distribution and gender balance.
Applications for in-person attendance and reimbursement eligibility are received until 15.01. 2026 Apply HERE.
Remember you must be a member of the PANGEOS COST Action CA22136 in order to be eligible, so join here if you have not yet done so already – https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA22136/working-groups/apply.
Training school MoU Research Coordination Objectives and Capacity-building Objectives:
Identify optimal and cost-effective proximal and UAV sensor synergies for field phenotyping of specific targeted crop physiological traits to guide crop breeding selection processes.
Develop a transferable framework for the integration of RS data inputs into precision agriculture fertilization and irrigation approaches for different crop types from vegetables to extensive cereal grain crops and woody crops such as vineyards, fruit orchards and forest products.
Provide the user community with data analysis tools integrating field delineation of management zones using soil property mapping and satellite-based data for the precision application of water, fertilizer, and pesticides.
To enhance the strategic aspects of EOS as a standard technology to support climate change, society issues, and ecosystem functions through time series of vegetation phenology, new sensor fusion approaches, and new data processing methods that are more accessible to end-users and policy makers, including the associated meanings and uncertainties of derived products.
Develop and promote a transferable framework for the optimal and most cost-effective integration of RS data inputs into WGs 1, 2, and 3. Harmonize WG4 optimization inputs with practical considerations relating to applied science in several cross-WG training workshops.
To encourage future contributions of Young Researchers and Innovators proactively from the start, while safeguarding gender balance and enhancing age diversity in the PANGEOS COST Action
Description:
Trainees will learn how to leverage remote sensing to estimate evapotranspiration across different scales of observation in the context of plant phenotyping, precision agriculture, and sustainability. Best practices for data standardization, calibration, and validation will expand on the examples of selected case studies for each working group (1,2,3), with traceability chain and uncertainties analysis.
Additional material: TBD
Organising Committee:
– Michal Antala, PhD
– Anshu Rastogi, PhD
– Prof. Marian Brestic
– Dr. Marek Zivcak.
Lead Lecturers/Tutors:
Eyup Selim – FAO Kc Crop Coefficient Estimation of Crop Water Needs
Martin Schlerf – Crop Water Stress Index
Hector Nieto – Two-source energy balance model and PyTSEB
Egor Prikaziuk – SCOPE
Auxiliary Support and Online Lectures Featuring
Shawn Kefauver – Dynamic thermal measurement calibration for airborne ET estimation
Mike Werfeli and Laura Mihai – Uncertainty analyses in Evapotranspiration – uncertainty propagation for multiple spectroradiometer – type sensors.
Info about the trainers:
Martin Schlerf (Geographer, Ph.D. in Remote Sensing) works as a Lead Researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). He is coordinating research projects in hyperspectral and thermal remote sensing of vegetated and non-vegetated surface properties with a focus on the retrieval of biophysical and biochemical vegetation properties at various scales for precision agriculture and forestry applications. He is a member of the Mission Advisory Group for the CHIME (Sentinel-10) mission to space by the European Space Agency and was chair of the SENSECO COST-Action.
Laura Mihai is a senior researcher at the National Institute of Laser Plasma and Radiation Physics (INFLPR), Center for advanced laser Technologies (CETAL), in Photonic Investigations Lab. She is responsible for the Spectroradiometry Lab. and Spectroscopy operation at CETAL, INFLPR, where she is developing protocols for spectral and radiometric characterisation, calibration and validation of field spectrometers, mainly used for vegetation monitoring.
Kadmiel Maseyk is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science Faculty of Science at Open University. He is a plant ecophysiologist interested in how plant function affects ecosystem carbon and water biogeochemistry. He has a strong interest in plant and ecosystem responses to environmental variability and global change processes. His work is predominantly field based, and has covered environments from the poles to the tropics.
Egor Prikaziuk is an assistant professor at the University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (UT-ITC). He is a co-developer of the SCOPE model. His research interests are plant productivity and evapotranspiration with remote sensing observations and models https://research.utwente.nl/en/persons/egor-prikaziuk
Mike Werfeli is currently working on his PhD thesis at UZH Remote Sensing Laboratories, working on uncertainty propagation of the upcoming ESA CHIME mission. Furthermore, he is working on field spectroradiometer calibration (spectral and radiometric) and assisting in AVIRIS-4 imaging spectrometer operations.
Participation and Support:
Participation in the training school will follow the in person model. There are only limited number people that can be supported for in-person attendance (https://www.cost.eu/uploads/2023/01/COST-Travel-Reimbursement-rules-November-2022.pdf).
Due to the enthusiasm for PANGEOS, in-person attendance and eligibility for full reimbursement is expected to be competitive. Selection will be based on the excellence criteria of the proposed scientific presentations and fit to the workshop objectives and working group breakout sessions, while always paying attention to the geographic and gender inclusiveness criteria for the workshop as a whole and in each working group session (https://www.cost.eu/about/strategy/excellence-and-inclusiveness/).
Selection for the participation to the training school will be finalised by the PANGEOS CORE Leadership Team by the end of January 2026, to allow for making travel arrangements.
CA22136 - PANGEOS COST Action 