Remote sensing is the acquisition of information of an object or phenomenon, by the use of either recording or real-time sensing device(s), that is not in physical or intimate contact with the object (such as by way of aircraft, spacecraft, satellite, buoy, or ship). In practice, remote sensing is the stand-off collection through the use of a variety of devices for gathering information on a given object or area. Human existence is dependent on our ability to understand, utilize, manage and maintain the environment we live in - Geoscience is the science that seeks to achieve these goals. This book is a collection of contributions from world-class scientists, engineers and educators engaged in the fields of geoscience and remote sensing.

This book is a composition of different points of view regarding the application of Computational Intelligence techniques and methods to Remote Sensing data and applications. It is the general consensus that classification, its related data processing, and global optimization methods are core topics of Computational Intelligence. Much of the content of the book is devoted to image segmentation and recognition, using diverse tools from different areas of the Computational Intelligence field, ranging from Artificial Neural Networks to Markov Random Field modeling. The book covers a broad range of topics, starting from the hardware design of hyperspectral sensors, and data handling problems, namely data compression and watermarking issues, as well as autonomous web services. The main contents of the book are devoted to image analysis and efficient (parallel) implementations of these analysis techniques. The classes of images dealt with throughout the book are mostly multispectral-hyperspectral images, though there are some instances of processing Synthetic Aperture Radar images.

This book presents decade-long advances in atmospheric research in the Mackenzie River Basin in northern Canada, which encompasses environments representative of most cold areas on Earth. Collaborative efforts have yielded knowledge entirely transferable to other high latitude regions in America, Europe and Asia. This book complements the first volume coming from the GEWEX project, dealing with the region's atmospheric dynamics.

This book provides insights from a geoscientist’s perspective into the benefits and the potential of remote sensing methods to address problems with a high social impact: identifying the drivers of geohazards and developing new methods for monitoring natural resources. The fields covered include volcanic hazards, seismic hazards, landslide hazards, land subsidence hazards and monitoring of natural resources through the use and combination of various remote sensing techniques and modelling approaches. This book should spark collaborations and encourage readers to think beyond disciplines or techniques, as well as enable readers to build their own workflow depending on their study of interest. It provides a much-needed comprehensive review of recent advances that remote sensing methods have brought to geohazards and resources research. It is unique in the way that it unifies geohazards and natural resources research to highlight cross-field advancements and potential areas for multiple fields of science to collaborate. The book intends to provide both a basic understanding of the remote sensing methods used in geohazards and natural resources sciences, with appropriate referencing for readers wishing to further their technique-specific learning, and a detailed application of these methods to a variety of sustainability problems. It aims at providing the reader with workflows for combining multiple techniques with demonstrated results in a variety of disciplines. This approach makes the book useful for both students learning about geohazards and resources, learning about remote sensing methods, and for researchers intending to expand their skill set using methods that have been applied to other fields. This book provides an introduction to each remote sensing method with references for in-depth technical learning which will benefit students in Remote Sensing courses.

This book provides basic and advanced concepts of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), PolSAR, InSAR, PolInSAR, and all necessary information about various applications and analysis of data of multiple sensors. It includes information on SAR remote sensing, data processing, and separate applications of SAR technology, compiled in one place. It will help readers to use active microwave imaging sensor-based information in geospatial technology and applications. This book: Covers basic and advanced concepts of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing Introduces spaceborne SAR sensors Discusses applications of SAR remote sensing in earth observation Explores utilization of SAR data for solid earth, ecosystem, and cryosphere, including imaging of extra-terrestrial bodies Includes PolSAR and PolInSAR for aboveground forest biomass retrieval, as well as InSAR and PolSAR for snow parameters retrieval This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in remote sensing, photogrammetry, geoscience, image processing, agriculture, environment, forestry, and image processing.

Albedo is a known and documented phenomenon, defined as the reflectivity of a surface, i.e., the ratio of reflected light energy to incident light energy. It is a dimensionless quantity, used in particular in agro-forestry, urban environment, cryosphere and geology. It is an Essential Climate Variable (ECV), deemed extremely meaningful to compute the earth heat balance. The albedo of natural surfaces varies largely, especially in the visible, with the lowest values found for water bodies and dense vegetation canopies and the highest values for desert and snow. It also changes with the angular distribution and spectral composition of the incident radiation and with the surface moisture. Satellite observations allow consistent measuring of the surface albedo at continental scale over a short period of time. Long-term series of surface albedo are good indicators of climate change, especially over glaciers and polar caps. On the other hand, the albedo of bare soil provides a good diagnostic of their degradation. The reliability of satellite albedo is verified against ground-based radiometers and UAV, which also serves to calibrate the instruments embarked on space-borne observing systems and check the quality of the atmospheric correction.

Land Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change: The Science of ASTER and MODIS is an edited compendium of contributions dealing with ASTER and MODIS satellite sensors aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua platforms launched as part of the Earth Observing System fleet in 1999 and 2002 respectively. This volume is divided into six sections. The first three sections provide insights into the history, philosophy, and evolution of the EOS, ASTER and MODIS instrument designs and calibration mechanisms, and the data systems components used to manage and provide the science data and derived products. The latter three sections exclusively deal with ASTER and MODIS data products and their applications, and the future of these two classes of remotely sensed observations.

This handbook is the first comprehensive overview of the field of satellite remote sensing for archaeology and how it can be applied to ongoing archaeological fieldwork projects across the globe. With a focus on practical uses of satellite remote sensing, Sarah H. Parcak evaluates satellite imagery types and remote sensing analysis techniques specific to the discovery, preservation, and management of archaeological sites.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Robot Vision, RobVis 2008, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 2008. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 15 posters papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers and posters are organized in topical sections on motion analysis, stereo vision, robot vision, computer vision, visual inspection, urban vision, and the poster section.