Rate My Professor Priyakant Sinha

Dr. Priyakant Sinha is a Senior Lecturer in Spatial Science, Remote Sensing and Spatial Science Applications at the Applied Agricultural Remote Sensing Centre within the School of Environmental and Rural Science, Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business and Law, University of New England, Australia. With more than 20 years of research and project experience in remote sensing and geospatial science across Australia, Ethiopia, and India, his work covers natural landscape management, river catchment management focusing on water quality, soil productivity, and soil biodiversity, biophysical modelling for landscape fragmentation and habitat connectivity, salt marsh vegetation mapping, and environmental impact assessment. A major aspect of his research involves vegetation condition assessments in natural and agricultural systems, crop conditions, and productivity estimations. He excels in remote sensing data analysis for optical sensors, LiDAR, and UAV data, spatial modelling, and has developed innovative methods for time-series change analysis using machine learning, Google Earth Engine, GDAL library, and WebApp development for geospatial data processing. His projects include hyperspectral data for banana species mapping in Uganda, sugarcane and mango yield mapping and forecasting in Australia, canola harvest timing prediction, habitat suitability and connectivity modelling for seabirds, and conservation priorities for eastern Himalayan mammals.

Sinha holds a PhD in Remote Sensing and GIS application in Vegetation Change Detection from the University of New England (2013), an MS in Environmental Science and Management from the University of New England (2018), and an M.Tech in Remote Sensing from Birla Institute of Technology, India (1999). Previously, he served as principal GIS and Remote Sensing analyst in a World Bank-funded project on sodic land reclamation for wheat crop production in India (2000-2003) and developed GIS raster-based multi-criteria analysis shell modelling for natural resource management priorities with the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage (2012-2013). He has over 10 years of teaching experience in remote sensing and geospatial courses in Australia and Ethiopia. At UNE, he teaches GISC334 Introduction to GIS and Spatial Thinking, GISC433 Spatial Analysis and Modelling, PA335/435 Precision Agriculture, and Hort420 Remote Sensing Applications in Horticulture. Key publications include Torgbor et al. (2024) "Exploring the Relationship Between Very-High-Resolution Satellite Imagery Data and Fruit Count for Predicting Mango Yield at Multiple Scales" (Remote Sensing); Sinha et al. (2020) "The potential of in-situ hyperspectral remote sensing for differentiating 12 banana genotypes grown in Uganda" (ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing); Dorji et al. (2018) "Identifying gaps and conservation priorities for eastern Himalayan threatened mammals" (Conservation Biology); and Albed et al. (2017) "Soil salinity and vegetation cover change detection from multi-temporal remotely sensed imagery" (Geocarto International).