Environmental data science, editorial solutions & scientific outreach

Effectively communicate your scientific data

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From data to publication, making past & present environmental data work for you

We are a team of environmental scientists dedicated to making sense of your environmental data and solving data driven environmental questions. With our combined expertise in remote sensing, ecological modelling, field surveys, tropical ecology and agroforestry, data science (ML/AI) & data rescue we can provide end-to-end research & development solutions. We help you effectively communicate research results, reaching both professional and general audiences.

services

our expertise

Data Science (ML/AI) & Research Software Engineering

We support your data analysis and synthesis, ranging from remote sensing data processing to machine learning.

Science Communication

Our editorial services quickly draft a manuscript or grant framework. We help you communicate your research, through formal and informal channels.

Experimental Design

We provide guidance in field survey planning, sampling protocol design and hardware & software development.

Portfolio

past & ongoing projects

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EU JRC Machine Learning data processing

BlueGreen Labs provided data management and machine learning software development expertise for the EU Joint Research Center (EU JRC) within the context of a landscape image segmentation project.

Applied research in smallholder farmer insurance

We provide protocol development and data processing expertise in support of this IFPRI led project to mitigate basic risk in smallholder farmer insurance.

High Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity

We provide remote sensing validation expertise in support of product development.

Movement ecology of swifts

BlueGreen Labs contributes to the field of movement ecology through the research of Lyndon Kearsley with a long running project on monitoring the (movement) ecology of swifts.

Open hardware development

We provide open hardware development in support of (academic) research.

Open Source Software development

We provide a range of open source software packages in support of (academic) research.

PhenoCam near-surface remote sensing protocols, research and development

We detailed the protocol for the implementation of cameras within the PhenoCam US and Integrated Carbon Observation System network.

Eco-climatological data recovery and valorisation

BlueGreen Labs has expert knowledge on (citizen science based) data recovery. In particular, we led the COBECORE project to develop a multi-faceted database by making the archives of the Institut National pour l’Etude Agronomique du Congo belge digitally accessible.

Jungle Rhythms

Project Lead. This project strives to transcribe old observations of tree life cycle events (flowering, leaf shedding, fruit dispersion), in central African Rainforests, which are key to understanding a tree’s functioning.

Virtual forest

A scientific outreach project to engage citizens with observing and enjoying phenology in VR.

Challenges in banana cultivation

Research paper development on banana pests and diseases, and the sustainability of smallholder banana-producing farms

Enset - Ethiopia’s tree against hunger

Analytical and editorial support for research on food security crops.

Historical Aerial Photography Valorization

We used a combination of historical (1958) aerial photography and contemporary remote sensing data to map long-term changes in the extent and structure of the tropical forest surrounding Yangambi (DR Congo) in the central Congo Basin.

Jungle Weather

Central African climate data rescue using a computer vision, deep learning and crowd sourcing methods.

Publications

Most recent academic work

Geoscientific Model Development
Our open-source software can help address the challenges of limited available hydro-climatic data within many regions of the world, by helping to save millions of handwritten records of historical weather data presently stored in archives, and expedite research on the climate and environmental changes in data scarce regions.
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Ringing & Migration
Observations of the 19 month continous flight of a subadult Swift refine new research avenues with respect to the behaviour of subadult Swifts in relation to migration strategies and the potential influence of skyglow on foraging.
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Scientific Data
We present a unique dataset of historical tropical tree phenology observations at two sites from different bioclimatic regions across the Congo Basin. These data may provide a reference baseline and key information on how tree species are responding to a changing climate.
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Recent Blog Posts

News, tutorials and more

1 min read remote sensing, food security, agroecology, agroforestry, bioacoustics, biodiversity
I’ve finally finished some light engineering for the bioacoustic monitoring work within the Root2Fork project this summer. The work requires installing monitoring stations to capture the (acoustic) biodiversity across various multi-strata agroforestry systems. The test rig is currently running in the garden with the others in storage. Some valuable lessons learned are that it seems: 1. good hardware stores are scarce these days, 2. sourcing from large vendors which would still serve smaller businesses and low volumes is key 3.

1 min read EU, remote sensing, soil, food security, agroecology, agroforestry
BlueGreen Labs is happy to announce our partnership with the Root2Fork project (project lead: Prof. dr. Farah Assaad at the Technical University of Munich). The project aims at measuring the impact of regenerative agriculture through multi-strata agroforestry systems, from both a economic (feasibility) and scientific perspective, and this across a large latitudinal gradient spanning the European continent. In this context, we will provide critical scientific (field) support; including logistics, soil sampling, bioacoustic and remote sensing solutions.

1 min read BTSF, course, remote sensing, teaching, uav, food security, plant health
I’m happy to have taught and coordinated another session of the Remote Sensing for Plant Health course for the EU Better Training for Safer Food initiative. This year the course featured a stronger UAV (drone) focus, with extensive hands-on demonstrations of aerial sampling of plant material, automated missions and hyper-spectral hardware setups. In addition, the basic theoretical background of remote sensing was provided including an understanding of the physics of the electromagnetic spectrum in the visible and near-infrared and its relation to vegetation indices.

3 min read software, R, package, API, remote sensing, data
This is a contribution of by Benjamin William Barrett who is a PhD student at the Health and Biomedical Informatics track of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Health Sciences Integrated PhD (HSIP) program. He was geocoding healthcare encounters within a singular, privacy-preserving, environment via containerization and Docker but struggled to get the {appeears} R package authentication working. I provided some guidance, mainly the use of a pre-created or spoofed keying, to avoid any user interaction in such a non-interactive setup.

4 min read data recovery, phenology, tropical forests
We present a unique dataset of historical tropical tree phenology observations at two sites from different bioclimatic regions across the Congo Basin. These data may provide a reference baseline and key information on how tree species are responding to a changing climate.

4 min read editorial, publications, funding, software, teaching
When starting a new year it always is good to look back at past achievements. Although the shifting geopolitical circumstances have soured the research climate, BlueGreen Labs’ output remained strong throughout 2025. In the spirit of the end-of-year lists we’ve created our own.
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Our Team

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Koen Hufkens, PhD

Founder, Researcher

Macro Ecology, Plant Physiology, Remote Sensing, Data Science & Rescue, Movement Ecology

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Elizabeth Kearsley, PhD.Eng.

Founder, Researcher

Tropical Ecology, Biodiversity, Agroforestry, Food Security, Gender Equality, Field Surveys

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Lyndon Kearsley

Research Associate

Bird migration, Bird behaviour, Pallid swift, GPS logging, Movement ecology

Contact

get in touch

  • For general inquiries and larger consulting tasks please use the email address below. Our time and expertise is valuable, to quickly pick our brains, problem-solving, validation and insights please book an appointment.
  • info@bluegreenlabs.org
  • Melsele, Belgium
  • Weekdays 09:00 to 17:00, CET
  • Book an appointment