Holly Croft

Dr. Holly Croft is a Senior UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Sheffield's School of Biosciences, specializing in ecological remote sensing. She holds a PhD in Physical Geography from the University of Exeter and an MSc in Environmental Monitoring from the University of Manchester. Her research integrates remote sensing data (UAVs to satellites) with field experiments to analyze vegetation productivity, carbon dynamics, and ecosystem responses to disturbances in Arctic, forest, and agricultural systems.

Her work focuses on biophysical modeling, chlorophyll-content mapping, and photosynthetic trait analysis to address climate-change impacts. She leads projects like RESOLVE (Horizon 2020 MSCA), investigating photosynthetic traits in high-latitude vegetation. Research themes include:

• Remote sensing of chlorophyll as a proxy for photosynthetic capacity
• Global distribution of leaf biochemical traits
• Carbon-water flux coupling under environmental stress
• Urban tree health monitoring using LiDAR

Her publications emphasize methodological innovations in scaling leaf-to-canopy processes, machine learning applications in satellite data, and long-term global chlorophyll mapping. Trends show a strong focus on model-data integration for climate resilience prediction.

Awards & Fellowships:

• UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (2020–present)
• MSCA Independent Research Fellowship (2018–2020)

She actively reviews grants for NSERC, ERC, NERC, and BELSPO, and serves on editorial boards for AGU publications and Remote Sensing (MDPI).