– Glacial and periglacial geomorphology
– UAV for environmental remote sensing
– Mars analog research
Lydia Sam is a remote sensing expert working on understanding Earth and planetary surfaces. She has research experience in glacio-hydrological studies, elevation modelling, remote sensing-based image processing and information extraction from planetary missions, in-situ measurements, and spatial modeling. She received DAAD scholarship to continue her doctoral research in environmental science with focus on glaciology at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Later on she joined Luleå University of Technology in Sweden as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research interests and contributions focus on using airborne and satellite remote sensing and GIS applications for environmental research, terrain modelling and interpretation, Martian landforms, using Unmanned aerial systems (UAS)/drones for environmental monitoring, analogies between terrestrial and Martian surfaces and landforms, and for studying the impact of changing climate on the cryosphere and water resources. Presently she is working as a lecturer in Earth Observation and Planetary Sciences in the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen.
1. Sustainable WAter Security through the Development of Artificial Glaciers (SWASDAG) in cold arid desert of Ladakh, India, Funded by Swedish Research Council between January 2018 and December 2020)
2. Robust infrastructure – Adapting railway maintenance to climate change (CliMaint), funded by VINNOVA Sweden’s Innovation Agency between 2019-2020.
1. Sam, L., Bhardwaj, A., Singh, S., Martin-Torres, F. J., Zorzano, M. P., & Ramírez Luque, J. A. (2020). Small Lava Caves as Possible Exploratory Targets on Mars: Analogies Drawn from UAV Imaging of an Icelandic Lava Field. Remote Sensing, 12(12), 1970p.
2. Sam L., Kumar, R., Bhardwaj, A. (2019). Glaciers as indicator of changing climate in Himalaya. A. Saikia and P. Thapa (eds.). Environmental Changes in the Himalayan Region. Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-03362-0_4
3. Bhardwaj, A., Sam, L., Martin-Torres, F.J., Zorzano, M.P. (2019). Are slope streaks indicative of global-scale aqueous processes on contemporary Mars? Reviews of Geophysics, 57.
4. Bhardwaj, A., Sam, L., Martín-Torres, F. J., Zorzano, M. P., & Ramírez Luque, J. A. (2019). UAV Imaging of a Martian Brine Analogue Environment in a Fluvio-Aeolian Setting. Remote Sensing, 11(18), 2104.
5. Sam, L., Bhardwaj, A., Kumar, R., Buchroithner, M. F., & Martín-Torres, F. J. (2018). Heterogeneity in topographic control on velocities of Western Himalayan glaciers. Scientific reports- Nature, 8(1), 12843.
