Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing, Spatial Modeling, and Data Mining for urban and environmental analysis and planning. Some of my recent research has focused on mapping urban land cover (green space, impervious surfaces, etc.) and monitoring forest health using fine resolution satellite imagery.
Ph.D. in Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University, USA (2012).
M.A. in Geography, Florida Atlantic University, USA (2007).
Detailed Land-Use and Land-Cover (LULC) information is of pivotal importance in, e.g., urban/rural planning, disaster management, and climate change adaptation. Recently, Deep Learning (DL) has emerged as a paradigm shift for LULC classification. To date, little research has focused on using DL methods for LULC mapping in semi-arid regions, and...
Aq’Qala county has been categorized as a high flood-prone area in Iran, and faced many major flood events in last two decades (e.g. in 2001, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2019). The main aim of the current study is to produce and validate flood vulnerability rate (FVR) maps of this area relying on geospatial data. Vulnerability criteria were...
Understanding how biophysical and biochemical variables contribute to the spectral characteristics of vegetation canopies is critical for their monitoring. Quantifying these contributions, however, remains difficult due to extraneous factors such as the spectral variability of canopy background materials, including soil/crop-residue moisture, soil...
Climate change and overpopulation have led to an increase in water demands worldwide. As a result, land subsidence due to groundwater extraction and water level decline is causing damage to communities in arid and semiarid regions. The agricultural plain of Samalghan in Iran has recently experienced wide areas of land subsidence, which is...
The study evaluates the impacts of India’s COVID-19 lockdown and unlocking periods on
the country’s ambient air quality. India experienced three strictly enforced lockdowns followed by
unlocking periods where economic and social restrictions were gradually lifted. We have examined
the in situ and satellite data of NO2 emissions for several...
Planning for a sustainable future involves understanding the past and present problems
associated with urban centers. Rapid urbanization has caused significant adverse impacts on the
environment and natural resources. In cities, one such impact is the unsettling urban growth, resulting
in the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which causes...
Forest ecosystems play an indispensable role in addressing various pressing sustainability and social-ecological challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. However, global forest loss has been, and still is today, an important issue. Here, based on spatially explicit data, we show that over the past 60 years (1960–2019), the global...
Accurate urban morphology provided by Local Climate Zones (LCZ), a universal surface classification scheme, offers opportunities for studies of urban heat risk, urban ventilation, and transport planning. In recent years, researchers have attempted to generate LCZ maps worldwide with the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT). However...
Forest ecosystems play an indispensable role in addressing various pressing sustainability and social-ecological challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem services deterioration, hence the monitoring of the world's forests is crucial. As part of the global forest assessment workflow, a forest is generally classified and...
Globally, estimating crop acreage and yield is one of the most critical issues that policy and
decision makers need for assessing annual crop productivity and food supply. Nowadays, satellite
remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) can enable the estimation of these crop
production parameters over large geographic areas. The...
