Front right: Prof. Dr. Pascale Ehrenfreund (Chair, DLR Executive Board); front left: Prof. Dr. Walter Kröll; second row left: prize winner Andreas Dietz
On 27 October 2015 Andreas Dietz, a scientist at the German Remote Sensing Data Center, was awarded the Helmut Rott Prize for his outstanding dissertation in the field of remote sensing of the cryosphere. It was based on a methodology he developed for studying the spatial and temporal dynamics of snow surfaces worldwide. Snow plays an important role as a primary water source particularly in dry, continental regions. Analysing long time series of daily remote sensing data makes it possible to identify changes in relevant snow parameters and to recognize trends — important information for arid regions like central Asia. The DLR scientist was honoured together with Ralf Rosenau of the Institute of Planetary Geodesy at Dresden Technical University, who used optical satellite data to derive and analyse over three decades of change in the flow velocity and frontage of some 300 glaciers along the Greenland coast.
