Associate Professor Mariela Soto-Berelov
Associate Professor
Details
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Department: School of Science
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Campus: City Campus Australia
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mariela.soto-berelov@rmit.edu.au
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ORCID:
0000-0003-1285-1622
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Dr Mariela Soto-Berelov is a geospatial scientist specializing in vegetation mapping and Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC). She uses satellite technology and geospatial tools to map and understand changes occurring across vegetated environments (resulting from long term climatic changes as well as recent events such as fires, deforestation, drought). She also assists land management agencies create frameworks to meet statutory forest reporting obligations.
Dr Soto-Berelov has also been the Program Manager for Geospatial Science at RMIT (BH117, BH117BP23) and B Science Major Geospatial Science (BP350) since 2022.
Supervisor projects
- Using Geospatial Artificial Intelligence to achieve environmental sustainability.
- 11 Sep 2025
- Exploring avian vocalization and environmental influence on functional biodiversity
- 5 Feb 2025
- Predicting Daily Fire Intensity in Australian Environments
- 20 Oct 2023
- Satellite Imagery and Its Influence on People’s Perceptions of Landscape
- 6 Aug 2023
- Geospatial Biomass Inference Modelling for tropical carbon sequestration measurement from space-borne data fusion to support REDD+ Implementations in Papua New Guinea
- 4 Jan 2023
- Unearthing Cultural Volcanic Landscapes Using Remote Sensing
- 18 Dec 2020
- Remote Sensing of Coastal Marine Plastic Debris
- 18 Aug 2020
- Exploring the Utility of High Frequency Satellite Information on Wildfire Characterization and Impact Estimation
- 6 Aug 2020
- Quantifying Large Area Land Use and Land Cover Change in Sri Lanka and its Impact on Elephant Habitat Using Time Series Remote Sensing Data
- 25 Oct 2019
- Monitoring Fire-driven Forest Dynamics Over Large Areas Using Passive and Active Remote Sensing
- 8 Aug 2019
- Using Innovative Remote Sensing Techniques to Improve the Quality and Accuracy of Koala Habitat Mapping in Eastern Australia
- 18 Sep 2018
- Extrapolating Forest Biomass Dynamics Over Large Areas Using Time-Series Remote Sensing
- 24 Oct 2016
- Using Earth Observation Satellites to Explore Forest Dynamics Across Large Areas
- 1 Mar 2016
Teaching interests
Since 2014, I have lectured and coordinated Geospatial Science (Earth Observation) and Science Communication/Data Analysis courses at RMIT (these last include one of the largest first year courses in the School of Science, STEM College). Throughout this time, I have taught over 2,500 students.
Research interests
Some research activities below:
- Project manager of The Von Mueller Vegetation Digitization Study Pilot Project (The Project), designed to produce a map of vegetation cover in Victoria during the early contact period to illustrate possible and probable areas of ecological value to Aboriginal people before colonization.
- Project manager of Riparian vegetation and Healthy Waterways (Melbourne Water). Investigate the use of Landsat satellite time series to characterise the condition of riparian vegetation across the Port Phillip and Westernport catchments.
- Project manager Phenology and Disturbance Monitoring: NSW Forest Monitoring Feasibility Project. Conduct in depth review as to how the state government of NSW could implement an annual assessment of phenology and disturbance across all the forested areas of NSW using satellite imagery.
- Contributed to the development of Victoria’s Forest Monitoring and Reporting Programme, which allows Victoria’s state land management agency (DELWP) to meet state, national, and international forest reporting and monitoring obligations.
- Project manager of CRCSI Project 4.104, LandFor (Landsat for Sustainable Forest management), A Monitoring and Forecasting Framework for the Sustainable Management of SE Australian, which for the first time in Australia mined the freely available satellite archive (30 years) to create statewide maps of forest disturbance. Involved supervising team of 9 and 2 PhD students.
- Representative Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network’s Melbourne AusCover node; coordinate and participate in field-based calibration and validation activities (across Australia) of biophysical products derived from satellite imagery.
- Lead coordinator, editor, and co-author of several chapters of a technical handbook (see publications) that collects guidelines from the Australian scientific community for the calibration and validation of biophysical products derived from satellite Earth Observationin Australia.
- Validate two Earth Observation derived products that map burned areas across all of Australia south of tropic of Capricorn. This is key to Australian federal agencies who rely on these products for carbon accounting purposes. Post project co-write findings in journal article.
- Completed several projects for state and federal land management. Worked in forest cover and burnt area mapping, large area forest characterization using GIS and remote sensing, and the CalVal of satellite-derived terrestrial products. Work requires extensive collaboration with stakeholders from multiple sectors including state and federal land management agencies (Department of Environment, ABARES).
