Visit to the School of Geography and Environmental Science, Dundee University as a Global Scholar from 15 Aug to 16 Sep 2022. The 4 weeks visit was very fruitful. The programme funded by the INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH (ISSR) resulted not only in knowledge exchange between Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Dundee University, but also research and other academic collaborations. Four weeks was too short to produce any tangible outcomes from the visit however, it led to many initiations for potential students and staff exchange between UTM and Dundee University, research collaborations among UTM, Dundee and Oxford University, journal article publication, and postgraduate student supervision.

Lecture on “Social and Environmental Sustainability of Palm Oil Industry in Malaysia” on the 30^th Aug 2022

With Dr. Alexandra Morel (left) and Dr Elizabeth Bastida (right)

with some of the students who attended the lecture.

Seminar on the 13^th Sep 2002

with Prof. mark Cutler

with some of the seminar participants

dinner with one of the co-directors of the Institute for Social Sciences Research (ISSR) Global Scholar Programme, Prof. Judith Sixsmith

Potential research collaboration with Prof. Lorraine Van Blerk (Human Geographer)

Field trip on 31^st Aug 2022 to Tentsmuir Nature reserve which is located at the most easterly point of Fife Council, at the mouth of the Tay estuary

with Dr. Alexandra Morel and staff from NatureScot

follow up discussion with Dr. Alex

Discussion with Dr. Alistair  on potential students and staff exchange between Dundee University (Geography) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Visit to Dundee satellite station Ltd (a commercial ground station), operating from the former RAF Errol airfield in Scotland

Satellite data receiving antenna

satellite overpass in real time

with Neil Lonie and Paul Crawford, the founders of Dundee satellite station Ltd.

Delivered a talk and had a discussion with Prof. Yadvinder Malhi and his postgraduate students at Oxford University

Interaction with the dean of the School of Humanities, Social sciences and Law

Interaction with other members of the Department of Energy, Environment and Society

International recognition for a research that we have been doing for the past 5 years – Research on soil moisture and satellite remote sensing (I acknowledge Kang Chuen Siang, my student who has just completed his PhD ).
Now the data is available on “International Soil Moisture Network” (ISMN)
http://ismn.geo.tuwien.ac.at/networks/mysmnet/

The first and only country in SEA to have such data. We name it MySMnet (Malaysia Soil Moisture Network).

ISMN is coordinated by the Global Energy and Water Exchanges Project (GEWEX) in cooperation with the Group of Earth Observation (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).

MySMNet provides free soil moisture and soil temperature data at surface (5 cm), 50 m and 100 m depth on hourly basis.

Please feel free to download (it is free) and use the data sets for any scientific works.

You can also refer to :
Kang, Chuen Siang, Kasturi Devi Kanniah, Yann H. Kerr, and Arthur Philip Cracknell. “Analysis of in-situ soil moisture data and validation of SMOS soil moisture products at selected agricultural sites over a tropical region.” International Journal of Remote Sensing 37, no. 16 (2016): 3636-3654.

Delivered a lecture on “The Role of Green And Blue Infrastructure for Sustainable Urban Development” to international students from Thailand, Korea, China and Lithuania and Malaysia students