PC (Paul) Vermunt

Paul Vermunt is a researcher in the radar remote sensing team of the Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing. He develops radar methods for near-real-time forest disturbance alerting with the new generation of long-wavelength missions. He also studies forest disturbance regimes across Europe and contributes to the operational RADD alert system.

Paul specialises is in microwave remote sensing of vegetation and soil, with a focus on water dynamics and drought. He holds an MSc in Hydrology from Utrecht University (2016) and a PhD from Delft University of Technology (2022), entitled “Understanding radar backscatter sensitivity to vegetation water dynamics: sub-daily variations in ground-based experiments”. From 2022-2026, he was a researcher at the University of Twente, where, as an ESA Living Planet Fellow, he further developed GNSS-based methods to continuously track tree water content in forests. His work combines field experiments in forests and agricultural fields, electromagnetic modelling and time series analysis. He teaches radar remote sensing of soil and vegetation. Paul is passionate about forests and about using the latest sensing techniques to understand how they respond to drought.