"The work that I do helps to ensure the continued accuracy of ocean colour data that underpin the new generation of ESA ocean observing satellites, that will be the principal European marine Earth Observation platform for the next 20 years. These satellite data in synergy with high, quality in-situ data provide the means to address environmental issues and challenges and to support policies to protect marine ecosystems. "
Dr Gavin Tilstone is a Merit Scientist with over 25 years’ experience in the fields of Inherent and Apparent Optical properties, phytoplankton, photosynthesis, primary production, ocean colour remote sensing. He leads research on satellite ocean colour validation and algorithm development, on water quality including detecting harmful algal blooms and the use of satellite ocean colour in quantifying the marine carbon cycle. He works Earth Observation Science and Applications group. Gavin’s role is to expand the use of Earth Observation data for studying the environment and quantifying the marine carbon cycle by bringing in research funding and leading projects.
Dr Tilstone manages a research team who work on optics and ocean colour remote sensing within International, European and UKRI research projects. The results from these projects contribute to impact in policy using ocean colour space observations to address key questions on climate change, eutrophication and harmful algal blooms. Dr. Tilstone has worked on >30 International and EU research projects, has considerable management experience as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on >20 ESA, EU, NERC and Commercial projects, has employed a wide range post-doctoral and visiting fellowships and has supervised 9 PhD projects.
Dr Tilstone has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers, with an H-index of 36 and i-10 index of 72. Gavin Tilstone gained his PhD in botany at the University of Exeter, UK and went on to do post-doctoral research on phytoplankton and bio-optics at CSIC, Vigo, Spain and Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.