Graduate Student

Hello, I am Sandip Rijal from Nepal. As a PhD student in the Department of Geoscience at Florida Atlantic University, I joined the Remote Sensing and Hyperspectral Lab in Spring 2023.

Education

• M.S.C in Environmental Science

  Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, India, 2019

• B.S.C in Forestry

  Tribhuvan University, Institute of Forestry, Hetauda, Nepal, 2016

Skills:

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Timeseries Analysis, ArcGIS Desktop, ERDAS Imagine, WebGIS, Google Earth Engine, E-cognition, ENVI, Google Colab, Fusion for LIDAR data analysis, MaxEnt, and Survey123

Work Experience

Graduate Teaching Assistant

• Teaching Assistant for Application in GIS course during Spring 2024.

Graduate Research Assistant

• Lead Research Assistant for a $2M Watershed Project which developed a new flood water management strategy and automated mapping process to mitigate flood impact in Polk County, Florida.
• Research Assistant for $250K Wetland Classification Project Using WorldView Imagery and Machine Learning for Blue Cypress Conservation Area.

GIS Analyst

• Used GPS for forest, watershed boundary delineation and stem mapping.
• Filtered data for tree selection during harvesting for implementation of the Shelterwood system.
• Developed slope, aspect, and land-cover/land-use map.
• Provided GPS and ArcGIS Desktop training to District Forest Office personnel in Palpa and Rammechhap, Nepal.

Grants/Scholarship

• Grant for Bachelor’s thesis entitled “Role of Bio-Gas in Conservation of Local Forest” from National Trust for Nature Conservation: 250 USD
• SAARC Scholarship for Master’s course: 4,230 USD
• Grant for Master’s Thesis entitled “Good Governance Assessment in Community Forest of Nepal” from WWF, Nepal: 700 USD

Publications

1. Thapa Chhetri, M., and Rijal, S., 2023. Satellite-based Analysis of Lake Okeechobee’s Surface Water: Exploring Machine Learning Classification for Change Detection Environ. Sci. Proc. 2024, 29(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/ECRS2023-15835
2. Puri, NK., Verma, AK., Chhetri R., Chand, HB., Rijal, S., 2022. Species Distribution Modelling of Two Sympatric Hornbills: The Great Hornbill and Rufous-Necked Hornbill in Bhutan, International Journal of Ecology, vol. 2022, Article ID 1475501, 9 pages, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/1475501
3. Rijal, S., Subedi, M., Chhetri, R., Joshi, R., 2021. Good Governance Assessment in Community Forest of Nepal, Journal of Forest and Environmental Science. https://doi.org/10.7747/JFES.2021.37.2.1
4. Rijal, S., Rauniyar, A., Thapa, S., Paudel, U., and Gautam, D., 2020. Ecosystem Services of Wetlands and Threats in Context of Nepal, International Journal on Forest, Soil and Erosion. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10767.41127
5. Joshi, R., Singh, H., Chhetri, R., Paudel, S., and Rijal, S., 2020. Carbon Sequestration Potential of Community Forest: A Comparative Analysis of Soil Organic Carbon Stock in Community Forest of Far-Western Nepal, Eurasian Journal of Soil Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18393/ejss.xxxxxxx

Projects

1. Downscaling Sentinel-3 Temperature Data

In this project, I used sentinel-3 thermal data and Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery to generate high-resolution temperature data for the region of interest. In addition, the time-series data for the same location are combined to produce a NetCDF file which is easier to handle and convenient to store.

2. Dynamic Hindu-Kush Himalaya

In this project, I used the Hindu-Kush Himalayas region in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) to generate timelapse imagery for visual comparison of the region across time. I selected the images from the years 2019 to 2024 to generate a timelapse image which shows the changing snow and vegetation cover on a seasonal basis.

Contact

• GitHub
• LinkedIn
• Google Scholar
• Email: srijal2023 [a] fau.edu /sandip.rijal55 [a] gmail.com

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