Helena Pielas is one of the beneficiaries of the competition for funding student and PhD candidates mobility within the HarSval project. She received 6000 PLN funding for the research trip: Institute of Atmospheric pollution Research (IIA).

Enjoy reading her report below:

“From January 12 to 18, 2025, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit CNR AII (The Institute on Atmospheric Pollution of the National Research Council) in Florence and collaborate with Dr. Roberto Salzano. The main goal of this visit was to enhance my understanding and skills in processing and analyzing time-lapse camera images used for monitoring snow cover at the Hornsund Polish Polar Station, which is closely tied to my master’s thesis topic.
Thanks to Dr. Salzano’s vast expertise in handling and interpreting this type of data, as well as his immense patience, I embarked on a crash course in R programming. This was essential for me to begin processing the images for analysis, and I also learned techniques for automatically classifying snow-covered areas in the images. While we had hoped to address orthorectification—key for obtaining accurate data on changes in snow cover — we unfortunately ran out of time. However, for this reason, our collaboration will certainly continue in the future. Overall, this trip was incredibly fruitful, allowing me to gain valuable knowledge and develop new skills.”