Francisco Alonso Sarria

Francisco Alonso Sarria is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Murcia, affiliated with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. His primary research focuses on Physical Geography, particularly hydrological processes, remote sensing applications, and environmental modeling in semi-arid regions. He leads the IMPRHAS research group, studying hydrological and environmental processes in semi-arid environments, and has contributed to understanding desertification dynamics and land abandonment impacts in Spain’s southeast regions.

Education: Doctorate from the University of Murcia (1995), with a thesis on rainfall analysis and hydrological impacts in a semiarid Mediterranean basin under supervision of Dr. Francisco López Bermúdez.

Research Interests: Remote sensing techniques, land use classification, GIS applications, machine learning in environmental modeling, climate change impacts, soil erosion, and water resource management in semi-arid ecosystems. His work integrates satellite imagery, spatial analysis, and statistical models to address environmental challenges like desertification, water scarcity, and land degradation.

Key contributions include developing open-source tools for image processing (e.g., fusionImage R package), optimizing atmospheric correction algorithms for Sentinel-2 data, and modeling evapotranspiration dynamics under climate change scenarios. He has also explored the ecological resilience of Mediterranean species like Pinna nobilis in coastal lagoons.

Grants: Involved in projects funded by CICYT (e.g., desertification monitoring) and others focused on wind energy mapping and hydrological modeling.

Labs/Teams: Active in IMPRHAS and the Mediterranean Ecosystems group (Eroderme), collaborating on interdisciplinary projects involving hydrology, ecology, and geomatics.