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Philippe Rufin
F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Fellow, Earth & Life Institute, UCLouvain
philippe.rufin@uclouvain.be

Geographer interested in linking Land System Science and Earth Observation. My work involves the development and application of methods for large-area mapping of land use and land use intensity based on machine learning. Currently, I´m working on mapping the dynamics of cropland, field size, and land use intensity in Sub-Saharan Africa using deep learning and very high spatial resolution satellite imagery.

Interests

  • Land System Science
  • Earth Observation
  • Machine Learning
  • Geospatial Data Science
  • Open Science

Academia

Earth & Life Institute, UCLouvain
2023 - 2026
Postdoctoral Fellow | Medium-scale farms in Sub-Saharan Africa
Earth & Life Institute, UCLouvain
2021 - 2023
Postdoctoral Fellow | Field size dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa
Earth Observation Lab, Humboldt-Universität
2019 - 2021
Postdoctoral Fellow | Large-area agriculture mapping
Earth Observation Lab, Humboldt-Universität
2015 - 2019
Ph.D. Geography | Earth Observation

News

Selected Publications

See Google Scholar for a full list
Responsible Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation, 2025, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine
Pedram Ghamisi , Weikang Yu , Andrea Marinoni , Caroline Gevaert , Claudio Persello , Sivasakthy Selvakumaran , Manuela Girotto , Benjamin Horton , Philippe Rufin , Patrick Hostert , Fabio Pacifici , Peter Atkinson
paper
To enhance sustainable development goal research, open up commercial satellite image archives, 2025, PNAS
Philippe Rufin , Patrick Meyfroidt , Felicia Akinyemi , Lyndon Estes , Esther Shupel Ibrahim , Meha Jain , Hannah Kerner , Sá Nogueira Lisboa , David Lobell , Catherine Nakalembe , Claudio Persello , Michelle Picoli , Natasha Ribeiro , Almeida Sitoe , Katharina Waha , Sherrie Wang
paper
Taking it further: Leveraging pseudo-labels for field delineation across label-scarce smallholder regions, 2024, Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
Philippe Rufin , Sherrie Wang , Sá Lisboa , Jan Hemmerling , Mirela Tulbure , Patrick Meyfroidt
code data paper
Can we estimate farm size from field size? An empirical investigation of the field size to farm size relationship, 2024, Agricultural Systems
Clemens Jaenicke , Maximilian Wesemeyer , Cristina Chiarella , Tobia Lakes , Christian Levers , Patrick Meyfroidt , Daniel Mueller , Marie Pratzer , Philippe Rufin
paper
An actor-centered, scalable land system typology for addressing biodiversity loss in the world’s tropical dry woodlands, 2024, Global Environmental Change
Marie Pratzer , Patrick Meyfroidt , [...] , Philippe Rufin , Mariana Rufino , Mahesh Sankaran , Ricardo Torres , Srinivas Vaidyanathan , Maria Vallejos , Malika Virah-Sawmy , Tobias Kuemmerle
paper
Understanding the robustness of spectral-temporal metrics across the global Landsat archive from 1984 to 2019, 2023, Remote Sensing of Environment
David Frantz , Philippe Rufin , Andreas Janz , Stefan Ernst , Dirk Pflugmacher , Franz Schug , Patrick Hostert
data paper

Projects

SEN4MOZ: Mapping Shifting Cultivation Dynamics in Conservation Areas of Mozambique using Copernicus Data (ESA EOAfrica R&D)
website
EOAgriTwin: Earth Observation based Digital Twin for Resilient Agriculture under Multiple Stressors (ESA DTE)
website
Medium-Scale Farms as Drivers of Deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa (F.R.S.-FNRS)
website
Mapping Field Size Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa (F.R.S.-FNRS)
website
Mapping Agricultural Systems of the Mediterranean
website
Remote Sensing of Dam-Induced Agricultural Change
thesis website