IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2019 - 182

WOMEN IN GRSS
SHAWN C. KEFAUVER, MARIKO S. BURGIN, AND LORI M. BRUCE

Dr. Marta Yebra: Balancing a Thriving
Career and a Rich Personal Life

n this "Women in GRSS" column,
we spotlight Dr. Marta Yebra and
discuss some of her ongoing research, her contributions to the
important process of scientific peer
review as an associate editor (AE) of
the Elsevier journal Remote Sensing of
Environment (RSE), and her experience finding her personal sweet spot
for a healthy work-life balance.
Originally from Spain, Dr. Yebra
now lives and works in Australia (she
has dual Spanish-Australian citizenship). She received a B.S. degree in
environmental sciences and a Ph.D.
degree in cartography, geographic
information systems, and remote Dr. Marta Yebra.
sensing from the University of Alcalá, Spain. During her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research,
she worked internationally, with the Center for Spatial
Technologies and Remote Sensing at the University of
California, Davis; the National Institute of Agricultural
Technology, Buenos Aires, Argentina; the School of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Salford,
United Kingdom; and the Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organisation, Australia.
Dr. Yebra is a senior scientist at the Center for Water
and Landscape Dynamics in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University
(ANU), Canberra, and mission specialist at the ANU Institute for Space. In 2017, she received the prestigious Max
Day Environmental Science Fellowship Award from the
Australian Academy of Science, and, in 2013, she won
the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization's Payne-Scott Career Award. Following

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2019.2912316
Date of publication: 18 June 2019

182

are excerpts from an interview with
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Magazine (GRSM)
Which of your professional projects are you the most excited about?
Marta Yebra: The project I am
most excited about is the one that
I lead for the Australian Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Center program. The
project aims to use remote sensing
techniques to map fuel conditions
and f lammability for Australia.
This project has allowed me to work
closely with fire agencies in several
Australian states and territories to
better understand their procedures
and information needs, comparing these with the spatial data and mapping methods that are already available and developing the next generation of mapping
technologies to help them predict, prepare for, and respond to bushfires.
In response to the information requirements expressed by end users in Australia, I have led the development of the Australian Flammability Monitoring System
[AFMS (http://anuwald.science/afms)]. The AFMS is
the first web application in the world to disseminate
satellite-derived fuel moisture content, flammability,
and other fire risk-related products at such a continental
scale. The spatial maps provided on the website are used
by land and fire managers to plan fuel-reduction activities, such as prescribed burning. The AFMS is also attracting great interest from insurance companies, which
can use the data to price fire risk into their policies. Also,
several private landowners have mentioned their interest in using our spatial data to inform their own bushfire plans and help them prepare for the bushfire season.
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

JUNE 2019

http://www.anuwald.science/afms

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2019

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