Remote Sensing of Forest Environments: Concepts and Case Studies is an edited volume intended to provide readers with a state-of-the-art synopsis of the current methods and applied applications employed in remote sensing the world's forests. The contributing authors have sought to illustrate and deepen our understanding of remote sensing of forests, providing new insights and indicating opportunities that are created when forests and forest practices are considered in concert with the evolving paradigm of remote sensing science. Following background and methods sections, this book introduces a series of case studies that exemplify the ways in which remotely sensed data are operationally used, as an element of the decision-making process, and in the scientific study of forests. Remote Sensing of Forest Environments: Concepts and Case Studies is designed to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of both practitioners and researchers. This book is also suitable as a secondary text for graduate-level students in Forestry, Environmental Science, Geography, Engineering, and Computer Science.

This edited book is a collection of information on recent advancements in remote sensing for forestry application. The main focus of this book is to address the novel applications in remote sensing in terms of recent techniques, sensors, methods and data collection. Remote sensing has been used for many decades. Today, remote sensing is heavily utilized in forest management, which is acquired from airborne and space-borne platforms using satellite data. In recent years, there have been rapid advances in the new types of sensors. The new generations of satellite sensors are introduced not only to provide important information on forest ecosystems, but also to improve the techniques and accuracies obtained by the traditional approaches. Researchers have become increasingly aware of the potential of remote sensing to address important forestry issues and challenges. The number of forestry publications using remote sensing has grown very rapidly, and this is noticeable with many recent technologies and applications. This book provides valuable source of reference to foresters, researchers, ecologists, climate change scientists and scholars who use remote sensing in their work. Furthermore, it serves as an academic book for undergraduate and graduate students of forestry, agriculture, natural resources and environmental sciences. The book demonstrates and engages the students how the new advancements in remote sensing technology and theory relate to the many real-world forestry applications. It gives readers deeper understanding on how remote sensing has come a long way and evolved into a mature science in the past five decades.

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) has emerged as one of the most promising remote sensing technologies to provide data for research and operational applications in a wide range of disciplines related to management of forest ecosystems. This book provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art review of the research and application of ALS in a broad range of forest-related disciplines, especially forest inventory and forest ecology. However, this book is more than just a collection of individual contributions – it consists of a well-composed blend of chapters dealing with fundamental methodological issues and contributions reviewing and illustrating the use of ALS within various domains of application. The reviews provide a comprehensive and unique overview of recent research and applications that researchers, students and practitioners in forest remote sensing and forest ecosystem assessment should consider as a useful reference text.

Ideal for both undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of geography, forestry, ecology, geographic information science, remote sensing, and photogrammetric engineering, LiDAR Remote Sensing and Applications expertly joins LiDAR principles, data processing basics, applications, and hands-on practices in one comprehensive source. The LiDAR data within this book is collected from 27 areas in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, and Haiti and includes 183 figures created to introduce the concepts, methods, and applications in a clear context. It provides 11 step-by-step projects predominately based on Esri’s ArcGIS software to support seamless integration of LiDAR products and other GIS data. The first six projects are for basic LiDAR data visualization and processing and the other five cover more advanced topics: from mapping gaps in mangrove forests in Everglades National Park, Florida to generating trend surfaces for rock layers in Raplee Ridge, Utah. Features Offers a comprehensive overview of LiDAR technology with numerous applications in geography, forestry and earth science Gives necessary theoretical foundations from all pertinent subject matter areas Uses case studies and best practices to point readers to tools and resources Provides a synthesis of ongoing research in the area of LiDAR remote sensing technology Includes carefully selected illustrations and data from the authors' research projects Before every project in the book, a link is provided for users to download data

′A magnificent achievement. A who′s who of contemporary remote sensing have produced an engaging, wide-ranging and scholarly review of the field in just one volume′ - Professor Paul Curran, Vice-Chancellor, Bournemouth University Remote Sensing acquires and interprets small or large-scale data about the Earth from a distance. Using a wide range of spatial, spectral, temporal, and radiometric scales Remote Sensing is a large and diverse field for which this Handbook will be the key research reference. Organized in four key sections: • Interactions of Electromagnetic Radiation with the Terrestrial Environment: chapters on Visible, Near-IR and Shortwave IR; Middle IR (3-5 micrometers); Thermal IR ; Microwave • Digital sensors and Image Characteristics: chapters on Sensor Technology; Coarse Spatial Resolution Optical Sensors ; Medium Spatial Resolution Optical Sensors; Fine Spatial Resolution Optical Sensors; Video Imaging and Multispectral Digital Photography; Hyperspectral Sensors; Radar and Passive Microwave Sensors; Lidar • Remote Sensing Analysis - Design and Implementation: chapters on Image Pre-Processing; Ground Data Collection; Integration with GIS; Quantitative Models in Remote Sensing; Validation and accuracy assessment; • Remote Sensing Analysis - Applications: LITHOSPHERIC SCIENCES: chapters on Topography; Geology; Soils; PLANT SCIENCES: Vegetation; Agriculture; HYDROSPHERIC and CRYSOPHERIC SCIENCES: Hydrosphere: Fresh and Ocean Water; Cryosphere; GLOBAL CHANGE AND HUMAN ENVIRONMENTS: Earth Systems; Human Environments & Links to the Social Sciences; Real Time Monitoring Systems and Disaster Management; Land Cover Change Illustrated throughout, an essential resource for the analysis of remotely sensed data, the SAGE Handbook of Remote Sensing provides researchers with a definitive statement of the core concepts and methodologies in the discipline.

Filling the need for a comprehensive book that covers both theory and application, Remote Sensing of Land Use and Land Cover: Principles and Applications provides a synopsis of how remote sensing can be used for land-cover characterization, mapping, and monitoring from the local to the global scale. With contributions by leading scientists from aro

This book brings together a collection of invited interdisciplinary persp- tives on the recent topic of Object-based Image Analysis (OBIA). Its c- st tent is based on select papers from the 1 OBIA International Conference held in Salzburg in July 2006, and is enriched by several invited chapters. All submissions have passed through a blind peer-review process resulting in what we believe is a timely volume of the highest scientific, theoretical and technical standards. The concept of OBIA first gained widespread interest within the GIScience (Geographic Information Science) community circa 2000, with the advent of the first commercial software for what was then termed ‘obje- oriented image analysis’. However, it is widely agreed that OBIA builds on older segmentation, edge-detection and classification concepts that have been used in remote sensing image analysis for several decades. Nevert- less, its emergence has provided a new critical bridge to spatial concepts applied in multiscale landscape analysis, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the synergy between image-objects and their radiometric char- teristics and analyses in Earth Observation data (EO).

This is a book about how ecologists can integrate remote sensing and GIS in their daily work. It will allow ecologists to get started with the application of remote sensing and to understand its potential and limitations. Using practical examples, the book covers all necessary steps from planning field campaigns to deriving ecologically relevant information through remote sensing and modelling of species distributions. All practical examples in this book rely on OpenSource software and freely available data sets. Quantum GIS (QGIS) is introduced for basic GIS data handling, and in-depth spatial analytics and statistics are conducted with the software packages R and GRASS. Readers will learn how to apply remote sensing within ecological research projects, how to approach spatial data sampling and how to interpret remote sensing derived products. The authors discuss a wide range of statistical analyses with regard to satellite data as well as specialised topics such as time-series analysis. Extended scripts on how to create professional looking maps and graphics are also provided. This book is a valuable resource for students and scientists in the fields of conservation and ecology interested in learning how to get started in applying remote sensing in ecological research and conservation planning.

An accessible yet rigorous introduction to remote sensing and its application to the study of vegetation for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. The underlying physical and mathematical principles of the techniques disucussed are explained in a way readily understood by those without a strong mathematical background.