Lingcao joins NSERC PermafrostNet in 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria under the supervision of Dr. Trevor Lantz. He is a remote sensing scientist with training and experiences in remote sensing, software engineering, geospatial big data, and computer vision. His project focuses on leveraging the state-of-the-art deep learning techniques and satellite imagery to map thermokarst and thermo-erosion features, especially retrogressive thaw slumps and active layer detachment, in the Arctic.
Lingcao obtained his Ph.D. from the graduate division of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019, advised by Dr. Lin Liu. His thesis developed an automated workflow to delineate thermo-erosion gullies and retrogressive thaw slumps on the Tibetan Plateau from unmanned aerial vehicle and Planet CubeSat imagery. He also utilized topographic and climatic data to analyze the controlling factors of the spatial distribution of these landforms. During 2020-2022, he was a Postdoc at University of Colorado Boulder supported by a visiting fellowship from Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. He improved and extended his workflow of mapping abrupt permafrost thaw to several regions in Canada and pan-Arctic using multi-temporal PlanetScope imagery and over 200 TB of ArcticDEM.