In recent years, the need to understand the urban environment has grown more urgent than ever. Climate change is not an abstract future scenario; it is already here, reshaping our cities day by day. Among the many phenomena that demand our attention, the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect stands out—not only for its environmental and public health impacts but also for its socio-political implications. Through satellite imagery and remote sensing, we can now visualize and quantify these dynamics with increasing precision. This post reflects on such an analysis I conducted using LANDSAT 8 imagery (Scene ID: LC08_L2SP_201032_20250328_20250401_02_T1, Date Acquired: 2025/03/28), and discusses the findings in the broader context of urban planning, climate justice, and the urgent need to protect urban vegetation.
Tag Archives: geography
Mapping My 10-Year Adventure: Running Madrid to Ulaanbaatar 10,127 km
In August 2014, I laced up my running shoes for the first time, with no grand expectations — just a simple desire to move, to feel better, to take control. I was far from athletic: weighing nearly 80 kilograms (almost 20 kg more than today), with no endurance, no rhythm, and definitely no running background (exception made of some runs in my mid 20’s :-)). But I made myself a promise: I would be stubborn, consistent, and patient. No matter the weather — rain, wind, snow, scorching heat, storms — I would run, three times a week, every week.
GEOGRAFÍA EN EL COLEGIO!
Ayer tuve el honor de compartir una hora y media con la clase de 2ºA de primaria del Colegio Ermita del Santo en Madrid, hablando sobre Geografía desde muchos puntos de vista. Desde las proyecciones cartográficas hasta Google Earth, pasando por un proyecto cartográfico real y reciente, y terminando con la relación entre la Geografía y la Meteorología. Pero lo más especial no fueron los mapas ni las explicaciones… ¡fueron las preguntas!
LOS ANGELES WILDFIRES 2025: Sentinel 2 +Overpass Turbo (OSM)
En Los Ángeles, la combinación de condiciones meteorológicas, como los vientos secos de Santa Ana y las altas temperaturas, crea un entorno propenso a incendios forestales. Estos fuegos, a menudo cercanos a áreas urbanas, representan un gran desafío para la gestión de emergencias. Aquí es donde Sentinel-2 se convierte en una herramienta crucial. Utilizando la combinación de bandas 12, 8, 4, Sentinel-2 permite detectar rápidamente focos de calor y evaluar la extensión de las áreas quemadas, lo que es vital para coordinar respuestas eficaces. Esta capacidad de monitoreo casi en tiempo real es fundamental para mitigar el impacto de los incendios y proteger tanto a las comunidades como a los ecosistemas.
Wildfires in Russia through SENTINEL 2
In recent days, the Sakha region in Russia has experienced significant wildfire activity, More than 100 wildfires spanning more than 300,000 hectares are currently active. driven by a combination of extreme weather conditions and environmental factors. The fires, which have spread across vast areas of forest and tundra, have been exacerbated by unusually high temperatures and prolonged periods of drought. These conditions have led to exceptionally dry vegetation, creating an ideal fuel for the fires.
Measuring snow coverage using EOB – Earth Observation – Sentinel HUB
Playing with Sentinel 2 images I realized that the amount of snow this year has been very low compared to last winter. Here are a couple of images from January 2022 and 2023 of the Canfranc – Paticosa – Jaca area. One of the most interesting things about this EO browser is that in addition to a standard 2D visualisation, we can visualise in 3D. Here is an video example. Another interesting thing is to be able to quantify the snowfall. There is a snow classifier based on NSDI (Normalized Difference Snow Index, The Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) snow cover is an index that is related to the presence of snow in a pixel and is a more accurate description of snow detection as compared to Fractional Snow Cover (FSC).
Measuring moisture: Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) Sentinel-2 2022
I am here in front of my desktop and I wonder how to take advantage of Sentinel Hub for tracking up moisture in a random plot anywhere in the world. Has it been irrigated at the right time for the type of crop? How has rainfall been affected over the analysis time? How has the use of certain fertilisers affected it? Has it positively affected production?. Let’s take a closer look.
Marathon à Nantes 2022: CHECKED!
J’ai toujours cru que faire les choses selon un plan facilitait la réalisation de ce que vous aviez prévu de faire, eh bien, quand il s’agit de courir un Marathon, c’est la clé. Lors de mon troisième Marathon après Valencia en 2017 et Madrid en 2019, on constate une meilleure tendance par rapport au nombre de kilomètres de préparation.
Visualising Wind from a GRIB Mesh Layer in QGIS and Create an Animated GIF
For a brief introduction into this new GRIB Mesh format (new to me) I followed step by step this tutorial bellow I had found in Hans Van der Kwast YouTube channel, it happened to be very good source and I finally made it (see below). The idea was analysing the winds during a Storm in the Netherlands (this storm was actually the 14th of March 2022 but I analyzed the 15th, no impact on the tutorial whatsoever but please note this point).
¡Viento del Sahara en España! ¡Sí!
De repente se levanta uno y ve los coches, los marcos de las ventanas y las aceras llenos de arena… ¿Qué es esto?, ¡Uno quiere comprender más en detalle! Si esto es en Madrid, qué no ocurrirá en Murcia (que está de camino)!! 🙂 Lo cierto es que si tomamos las imágenes del SENTINEL 5P Aerosol index podemos ver cómo en esa longitud de onda encontramos aerosoles. ¡Y muchos! ¿Y hacia dónde se desplazan?. Directos al centro de la península.
Geovisualization.net 