Hou Zhengyang

My name is HOU Zhengyang, and I am a twenty-nine years old Chinese forester. As a first impression, people may wonder why “HOU” is written in capital letters? The secret is pretty simple in that it is actually my family name, and in case of confusion I always inherit this French usage as a hint.

I was computer nut, but my dad was forester. Therefore, I fortunately majored in forestry application of remote sensing and GIS, a hybrid of computing science and forestry, when I was studying at the Beijing Forestry University in China. Being indispensable, my Finnish residence permits of the past two years tell that I am supposed to be a veteran surviving long enough in Finland. I would agree with that, although I was about half the time exchanged to elsewhere in Europe. All these refreshing and memorable experiences during the period from 2008 to 2010 are thanks to my former Master program, M.Sc. European Forestry of Erasmus Mundus, hosted by the University of Joensuu, now merged with the University of Kuopio to form the University of Eastern Finland (UEF).

Recently, I became the holder of the Ponsse Grant 2010 for the Ph.D. research facilitated by the Foundation for the European Forest Research. I conduct my duty at the headquarters of European Forest Institute (EFI) as a Ph.D. researcher focusing mainly on ALS based harvesting planning in the context of precision forestry. I also receive superb supervision from the School of Forest Sciences at the UEF.

My two ongoing sub-studies aim at developing: 1) a cost-effectivemultisource remote sensing based forest inventory system for natural tropical forests with unknown age, density or structure, and 2) an automated and feasible approach for delineating attributively homogenous segments reflecting the current state of a certain type of tropical forest. These studies will develop methodologies applicable also to facilitate the REDD process. The rest of my sub-studies will focus on: 1) optimising the sampling design with a given budget and accuracy, and 2) the terrain trafficability modelling to predict the logistic characteristics of specific forest compartments. All these studies highlight the airborne laser scanning (ALS) technology as the potentially most promising approach not only for a more detailed tropical forest assessment but also for supporting the harvest planning integrated to GIS systems.

Not similar to public in many occasions, it may not be too ideal or emotional way considering forests from the perspective of foresters, which is rather often rational. However, this will not hurt my enjoyments of morning cycling along shortcuts in forests from home to work, even if I never would dare to do it in Joensuu’s mid winter!

Visit also my staff page at EFI