Richard Fernandes, Ph.D.

Research Scientist

Environmental monitoring at regional to continental scales using satellite datasets. Modelling water and energy interchanges between vegetated ecosystems and the atmosphere.

Current research and/or projects

Major research questions:

  • How much water does Canada have and is our water use sustainable?
  • Can we use satellite information to reduce uncertainty in projected climate impacts on our water supply?
  • How accurate are current climate data records of land condition related to vegetation and snow cover  produced from satellite datasets?  Can we improve these datasets to meet requirements of the Global Climate Observing System?     

Education and awards

Ph.D. in Hydrology, 1999, University of Toronto

Key publications

Fernandes, R., Zhao, H., Wang, X., Key, J., Qu, X., Hall, A., 2009, Controls on the Northern Hemisphere snow albedo feedback quantified by satellite earth observations, Geophysics Research Letters, in press.

Zhao, H., and Fernandes, R. 2009, Daily snow cover estimation from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Polar Pathfinder data over Northern Hemisphere land surfaces during 1982–2004, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D05113, doi:10.1029/2008JD011272.

Fernandes, R.A., Korolevich, V. and Wang, S. 2007, Trends in land evapotranspiration over Canada for the period 1960-2000 based on in situ climate observations and a land surface model , Journal of Hydrometeorology 8 (5), pp. 1016-1030

Rochdi, N., Fernandes, R.A. and Chelle, M., 2006, An assessment of needles clumping within shoots when modeling radiative transfer within homogeneous canopies , Remote Sensing of Environment 102 (1-2), pp. 116-134.

Fernandes, R., Butson, C.G. and Leblanc, S., 2004, Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ based accuracy assessment of leaf area index products for Canada derived from SPOT-4 VEGETATION data, Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 29 (2), pp. 241-258