09/2021 – 08/2026 F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Fellow: Agricultural dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa
Land Systems for Sustainability Lab | Earth & Life Institute | UCLouvain | Belgium

04/2019 – 09/2021 Postdoctoral Fellow: Large-area agriculture mapping
Earth Observation Lab | Geography Department | Humboldt-Universität, Germany

05/2015 – 04/2019 Dr. rer. nat. Geography: A global to regional scale assessment of dam-induced agricultural change by means of remote sensing
Earth Observation Lab | Geography Department | Humboldt-Universität, Germany

05/2014 – 05/2015 Research Associate: Social-ecological trade-offs of dams & reservoirs
Earth Observation Lab | Geography Department | Humboldt-Universität, Germany

10/2011 – 05/2014 M.Sc. Physical Geography of Human-Environment-Systems
Geography Department | Humboldt-Universität, Germany

12/2011 – 04/2014 Student Collaborator
Land System Science Cluster | Geography Department | Humboldt-Universität, Germany

10/2007 – 09-2011 B.A. Geography
Geography Department | Humboldt-Universität, Germany

Website: https://philipperufin.github.io/

BlueSky: @philrufin.bsky.social

Mastodon: @philrufin@mapstodon.space

ORCiD: 0000-0001-8919-1058

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=62sSWfEAAAAJ&hl=de

Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philippe-Rufin-2

BSc Courses

• VL Introduction to Remote Sensing
• PC-S Introduction to Remote Sensing

 MSc Courses

• VL Principles of GIS and Remote Sensing
• VL Advanced Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics

 Vorherige Kurse:

• Earth Observation, M.Sc. Global Change Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Introduction to Remote Sensing, B.Sc. Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Statistics for Geographers, B.Sc. Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Applied Geoinformation Science, B.Sc. Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Quantifying and understanding land change in social-ecological systems: Impacts of dam construction, B.Sc. Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Research Interests

I am a Geographer with a strong interest in Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics in the context of Land System Science and Sustainability Science. My research involves the development and application of tools and methods for large-area mapping of land use and land use intensity across decadal time frames. Currently, my work focuses on mapping the dynamics of cropland, field size, and land use intensity in heterogeneous and dynamic smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, for which I use deep learning and very high spatial resolution satellite imagery. For more information and recent updates, feel free to visit my website.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Rufin, P., Hammer, P. L., Thomas, L.-F., Lisboa, S. N., Ribeiro, N., Sitoe, A., Hostert, P., & Meyfroidt, P. (2026). National-scale field delineation in Mozambique refines our understanding of cropland distribution, field size, and deforestation actors. Environmental Research Letters, 21(8), 084009. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae5cb4

 Akinyemi, F. O., Rufin, P., Ibrahim, E. S., Hostert, P., Ogunsumi, L. O., Egbetokun, O. A., & Ifejika Speranza, C. (2026). Mapping crop types in smallholder mono- and intercropping systems with multi-sensor data in regions with multiple growing cycles. Science of Remote Sensing, 13, 100416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.srs.2026.100416

 Peña-Guerrero, M. D., Senay, G. B., Umirbekov, A., Tarasova, L., Rufin, P., Pulatov, B., & Müller, D. (2026). Climate change has increased crop water consumption in Central Asia despite less water-intensive cropping. Communications Earth & Environment, 7(1), 122. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03142-y

 Xiong, S., Hadunka, P., Mulenga, B., Baylis, K., Rufin, P., & Estes, L. (2026). Is field size an indicator of farm size in smallholder-dominated croplands? Environmental Research: Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601X/ae490a

 Bhagwat, T., Rufin, P., Kuemmerle, T., & Kamp, J. (2025). Landscape composition drives winter bird assemblages in agriculture–savanna mosaics of western India. Ecological Applications, 35(2).  https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70016

 Ghamisi, P., Yu, W., Marinoni, A., Gevaert, C. M., Persello, C., Selvakumaran, S., Girotto, M., Horton, B. P., Rufin, P., Hostert, P., Pacifici, F., & Atkinson, P. M. (2025). Responsible Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation: Achievable and realistic paths to serve the collective good. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, 2–26. https://doi.org/10.1109/MGRS.2025.3529726

 Rufin, P., Meyfroidt, P., Akinyemi, F. O., Estes, L., Ibrahim, E. S., Jain, M., Kerner, H., Lisboa, S. N., Lobell, D., Nakalembe, C., Persello, C., Picoli, M. C. A., Ribeiro, N., Sitoe, A. A., Waha, K., & Wang, S. (2025). To enhance sustainable development goal research, open up commercial satellite image archives. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(7). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2410246122

 Rufin, P., Wang, S., Lisboa, S. N., Hemmerling, J., Tulbure, M. G., & Meyfroidt, P. (2024). Taking it further: Leveraging pseudo-labels for field delineation across label-scarce smallholder regions. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 134, 104149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.104149

 Jänicke, C., Wesemeyer, M., Chiarella, C., Lakes, T., Levers, C., Meyfroidt, P., Müller, D., Pratzer, M., & Rufin, P. (2024). Can we estimate farm size from field size? An empirical investigation of the field size to farm size relationship. Agricultural Systems, 220, 104088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2024.104088

 Meyfroidt, P., Abeygunawardane, D., Baumann, M., Bey, A., Buchadas, A., Chiarella, C., Junquera, V., Kronenburg García, A., Kuemmerle, T., Le Polain De Waroux, Y., Oliveira, E., Picoli, M., Qin, S., Rodriguez García, V., & Rufin, P. (2024). Explaining the emergence of land-use frontiers. Royal Society Open Science, 11(7), 240295. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240295

 Chiarella, C., Rufin, P., Abeygunawardane, D., Bey, A., Lisboa, S. N., Zavale, H., & Meyfroidt, P. (2024). Impacts of large-scale forestry investments on neighboring small-scale agriculture in northern Mozambique. Land Use Policy, 145, 107251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107251

 Pratzer, M., Meyfroidt, P., Antongiovanni, M., Aragon, R., Baldi, G., Czaplicki Cabezas, S., De La Vega-Leinert, C. A., Dhyani, S., Diepart, J.-C., Fernandez, P. D., Garnett, S. T., Gavier Pizarro, G. I., Kalam, T., Koulgi, P., Le Polain De Waroux, Y., Marinaro, S., Mastrangelo, M., Mueller, D., Mueller, R., …, Rufin, P., … Kuemmerle, T. (2024). An actor-centered, scalable land system typology for addressing biodiversity loss in the world’s tropical dry woodlands. Global Environmental Change, 86, 102849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102849

 Salomão, C., Alsleben, J., Rufin, P., & Hostert, P. (2024). Mapping hydropower expansion and cash crop dynamics in Colombia using Landsat time series. Geocarto International, 39(1), 2322064. https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2024.2322064

 Frantz, D., Rufin, P., Janz, A., Ernst, S., Pflugmacher, D., Schug, F., & Hostert, P. (2023). Understanding the robustness of spectral-temporal metrics across the global Landsat archive from 1984 to 2019 – a quantitative evaluation. Remote Sensing of Environment, 298, 113823. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113823

 Reis, T. N. P. dos, Ribeiro, V., Garrett, R. D., Kuemmerle, T., Rufin, P., Guidotti, V., Amaral, P. C., & Meyfroidt, P. (2023). Explaining the stickiness of supply chain relations in the Brazilian soybean trade. Global Environmental Change, 78(344), 102633. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102633

 Friis, C., Hernández-Morcillo, M., Baumann, M., Coral, C., Frommen, T., Ghoddousi, A., Loibl, D., & Rufin, P. (2023). Enabling spaces for bridging scales: Scanning solutions for interdisciplinary human-environment research. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01271-3

 Rufin, P., Bey, A., Picoli, M., & Meyfroidt, P. (2022). Large-area mapping of active cropland and short-term fallows in smallholder landscapes using PlanetScope data. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 112(1), 102937. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2022.102937

 Rufin, P., Peña-Guerrero, M. D., Umirbekov, A., Wei, Y., & Müller, D. (2022). Post-Soviet changes in cropping practices in the irrigated drylands of the Aral Sea basin. Environmental Research Letters, 17(9), 095013. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac8daa

 Frantz, D., Hostert, P., Rufin, P., Ernst, S., Röder, A., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Revisiting the Past: Replicability of a Historic Long-Term Vegetation Dynamics Assessment in the Era of Big Data Analytics. Remote Sensing, 14(3), 597. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030597

 Oliveira, H. F. M., Fandos, G., Zangrandi, P. L., do Nascimento Bendini, H., Silva, D. C., Muylaert, R. L., Marinho-Filho, J. S., Fonseca, L. M. G., Rufin, P., Schwieder, M., & others. (2022). Crops, caves, and bats: Deforestation and mining threaten an endemic and endangered bat species (Lonchophylla: Phyllostomidae) in the Neotropical savannas. Hystrix, the Italian Journal of Mammalogy. https://doi.org/10.4404/hystrix-00541-2022

 Rufin, P., Frantz, D., Yan, L., & Hostert, P. (2021). Operational Coregistration of the Sentinel-2A/B Image Archive Using Multitemporal Landsat Spectral Averages. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 18(4), 712–716. https://doi.org/10.1109/LGRS.2020.2982245

 Rufin, P., Rabe, A., Nill, L., & Hostert, P. (2021). GEE Time Series Explorer for QGIS – Instant Access to Petabytes of Earth Observation Data. ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLVI-4/W2-2021, 155–158. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVI-4-W2-2021-155-2021

 Borona, P., Busch, F., Krueger, T., & Rufin, P. (2021). Uncertainty in Drought Identification Due to Data Choices, and The Value of Triangulation. Water, 13(24), 3611. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243611

 Ibrahim, E. S., Rufin, P., Nill, L., Kamali, B., Nendel, C., & Hostert, P. (2021). Mapping Crop Types and Cropping Systems in Nigeria with Sentinel-2 Imagery. Remote Sensing, 13(17), 3523. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13173523

Rufin, P., Müller, D., Schwieder, M., Pflugmacher, D., & Hostert, P. (2021). Landsat time series reveal simultaneous expansion and intensification of irrigated dry season cropping in Southeastern Turkey. Journal of Land Use Science, 3(3), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2020.1858198

 Rufin, P., Gollnow, F., Müller, D., & Hostert, P. (2019). Synthesizing dam-induced land system change. AMBIO, 92, 90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-01144-z

 Rufin, P., Frantz, D., Ernst, S., Rabe, A., Griffiths, P., Özdoğan, M., & Hostert, P. (2019). Mapping Cropping Practices on a National Scale Using Intra-Annual Landsat Time Series Binning. Remote Sensing, 11(3), 232. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030232

 Bendini, H. N., Garcia Fonseca, L. M., Schwieder, M., Sehn Körting, T., Rufin, P., Del Arco Sanches, I., Leitão, P. J., & Hostert, P. (2019). Detailed agricultural land classification in the Brazilian Cerrado based on phenological information from dense satellite image time series. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 82, 101872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2019.05.005

 Rufin, P., Levers, C., Baumann, M., Jägermeyr, J., Krueger, T., Kuemmerle, T., & Hostert, P. (2018). Global-scale patterns and determinants of cropping frequency in irrigation dam command areas. Global Environmental Change, 50, 110–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.02.011

 Müller, H., Rufin, P., Griffiths, P., de Barros Viana Hissa, Letícia, & Hostert, P. (2016). Beyond deforestation: Differences in long-term regrowth dynamics across land use regimes in southern Amazonia. Remote Sensing of Environment, 186, 652–662. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.09.012

 Müller, H., Rufin, P., Griffiths, P., Barros Siqueira, Auberto José, & Hostert, P. (2015). Mining dense Landsat time series for separating cropland and pasture in a heterogeneous Brazilian savanna landscape. Remote Sensing of Environment, 156, 490–499. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2014.10.014

 Rufin, P., Müller, H., Pflugmacher, D., & Hostert, P. (2015). Land use intensity trajectories on Amazonian pastures derived from Landsat time series. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 41, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2015.04.010