Dr. John Connolly

Dr. John Connolly is The Kinsella Assistant Professor in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing and leads the Trinity Geospatial Research Group. He joined Trinity College Dublin in September 2020. He teaches GIS and remote sensing at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. John's research uses GIS and Earth Observation to study the terrestrial environment including land use change; landscape carbon dynamics; solar mapping and habitat assessment using EO. He has produced more than 30 journal articles, reports and policy statements including articles in leading international peer-review journals such as: Earth Science Reviews; International Journal of Remote Sensing and Biogeosciences.

John is currently the Principal Investigator for the EPA funded iHabiMap project (2019 - 2023). He is a CO-PI on several projects including the EPA & NPWS funded Irish Peatland Resilience project(2021 - 2024), SmartBog project(2019-2023); the DAFM funded GENENET project project (2020-2022) and the SFI funded Enable SolarMap Project (2020-2021). He is also an international collaborator on the Boston University led GLanCE Project(2019-2024). He has co-ordinated several national and international research proposals including FP7, H2020, EPA, DAFM and a Google Earth Engine Research Award. John Collaborates widely and has active collaborations with colleagues in Ireland, Germany, UK, Sweden, USA, Canada and Brazil.

He currently co-supervises three PhD students (two at Trinity and one in Greifswald University) and co-supervises a Post Doctoral Researcher (DCU Insight centre).

He is interested in supervising PhD students, and working with Post Doctoral researchers interested in applied GIS and Earth Observation (Google Earth Engine etc.) under the following themes

· Global Land use and land use change using EO

· Landscape carbon dynamics (Net Ecosystem Exchange)

· Mapping peatlands and peatland degradation

· Mapping peatlands and peatland degradation

· Mapping the historical extent of peatlands and loss of carbon

· Mapping Ecosystem Services in the natural environment

· EO for renewable energy (i.e. Solar Mapping, Marine Survey)

· Permafrost degradation and net ecosystem exchange in the Arctic

Prior to joining Trinity College Dublin, John held positions at Dublin City University, Lund University, University College Cork and University College Dublin