About

WHO AM I?

I am a physical geographer working on the hydrology of the Earth’s surface, primarily in Nordic and Arctic environments, and how it is expressed in satellite radar measurements. My research addresses changes in the storage and movement of water, in rivers, lakes, wetlands, soils and vegetation, the drivers behind them, and their consequences for the land surface. I use synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR), SAR imagery and satellite altimetry, combined with physically based and statistical modelling, to retrieve water extent, water level, soil moisture, and the surface motion and phase changes that accompany them. A recurring theme in my work is the interferometric phase over partially coherent surfaces, particularly flooded and emergent vegetation, where the signal is noisy yet carries geophysical information.

Current Mission:

I am the Principal Investigator (PI) of a project funded by the Swedish National Space Agency (Rymdstyrelsen) to establish a national-scale, satellite-based monitoring system for Sweden’s surface water dynamics. In this project, which is a collboration between Stockholm University and the University of Michigan, I intend to integrate Earth Observations (EO) for enhancing Sweden’s national water security under climate change. The project uses high-resolution data from recent EO missions including Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT), Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), and NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), to quantify river flow, water extent, elevation, and storage.
In parallel, I work with the R&D function of the company Total Digital, where I lead a project to help Swedish municipalities to identify water leakage in the pipeline system. Between 15-20 % of all freshwater in Sweden goes to waste due to undetected leaks in the pipelines. For this project, we use long-wavelength SAR and other sources of data to spot surface and sub-surface moisture anamolies associated with water leaks.
Before that, I worked as a postdoc at Chalmers University of Technology and expereinced a different institution and research environment, where I shifted my emphasis from hydrological applications of InSAR towards radar signal processing. I was responsible for a project funded by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) to estimate ground motion around and on railroads in Sweden.

PhD:

I started my PhD studies in 2019 in hydrology and satellite remote sensing and graduated in 2023. Read about my PhD research here. I like to see the impact of my work on society and I strive to achieve meaningful and helpful results in my research. I love communication and being with people. You need to ask this from my colleagues and students. I have mentored master’s and junior Ph.D. students. According to them (both in the evaluation forms and in person), I am supportive of my colleagues and students and they feel comfortable turning to me to get help and advice. This feels so great that I can’t describe it.

Other Interests:

I love comedies (standup and tv shows), and my all-time favorite comedians are Larry David and David Mitchell. I quote too way often from Seinfeld, Peep Show, and Curb Your Enthusiasm! So, I get along well with those team members who respect wood!

I also love football (soccer), I even had a team in the Swedish amateur league (Korpen) for two seasons (2021-2022 & 2022-2023). We never came first, but we had a good team.