Prof Onisimo Mutanga

Onisimo Mutanga is a full Professor and Academic Leader (Research) in the School of Agriculture, Earth and Environmental Science at the University of KwaZulu- Natal. He completed his PhD on Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Tropical grass quality and quantity at Wageningen University-ITC (Netherlands) in 2004. His expertise lies on Ecological Remote Sensing, with particular emphasis on vegetation pattern analysis and monitoring,as well as  agricultural landuse mapping. His focus in recent years has been on the development of remote sensing techniques for mapping tropical vegetation quality and quantity to understand wildlife feeding patterns and distribution.  His emerging niche areas include mapping vegetation species, disease infestation on plantation forests and agricultural crops, quantification of forest degradation and its impact on biodiversity and ecosystem condition as well as landcover change analysis in the face of climate change.

Prof Mutanga has more than 12 years’ experience in tertiary education and has graduated 7 PhDs and 14 Masters Students and is currently supervising more than 15 post graduate students. He has published more than 60 articles in ISI journals and has several conference proceedings and book chapters. He holds a C1 NRF rating and serves in several national and international research committees. He is currently an Associate Editor of the ISPRS Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing journal. He also acts as a reviewer in several scientific journals, including Remote Sensing of Environment, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, and other Ecological journals as well as reviewing applications for several funding organizations. He has collaborated on several projects which include, Landcover/use in Rural and Urban Environments (ACCESS), Cattle keeping in a changing rural landscape, Indigenous Forest Fragmentation and Ethekwini Biodiversity Management. He is a member of the African association of the Remote Sensing of Environment (AARSE), IES- AFRICA among other organizations.