Fundamentals of Satellite Remote Sensing: An Environmental Approach

An extensive review of remote sensing principles with an emphasis on environmental applications, Fundamentals of Satellite Remote Sensing discusses a wide range of topics, from physical principles to data acquisition systems and on to visual and digital interpretation techniques. The text focuses on the interpretation and analysis of remote sensing images and how they improve our understanding of environmental processes and their interaction with human activities.

The authors discuss new interpretation approaches, including hyperspectral analysis, high-spatial resolution data, and radiative transfer models. The presentation includes an analysis of accuracy assessment methods and demonstrates how to integrate remote sensing results with geographic information systems. It also covers recent missions, such as Terra-Aqua, Envisat, Ikonos-Quickbird-Geoeye and SPOT-5, as well as LIDAR and interpherometric radar.

The discussion of visual criteria to extract interpretation from satellite images emphasizes differences and similarities with conventional photo-interpretation techniques. A chapter on accuracy assessment and the connection between remote sensing and geographic information systems helps readers extend the interpretation of satellite images to a more operational, applications-oriented framework.

Professor Alfredo Huete is a professor in the School of Life Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney. He is a world renowned geospatial ecologist who uses advanced remote sensing tools to assess broad scale ecosystem functioning, vegetation phenology and health. He uses satellite and field observations to assess land surface interactions and ecosystem resilience with climate, land use activities and major disturbance and extreme events. Professor Huete has twenty-five years experience in vegetation remote sensing for NASA mission teams. He is a founding and continuing member of the NASA-EOS MODIS Science Team. In recognition of his pioneering work in the design of vegetation satellite products used by the remote sensing community to assess vegetation biophysical states and processes of global ecosystems, he earned a NASA Service Achievement Award for NASA MODIS Product Development and a NASA Group Achievement Award for the Suomi NPP Mission Development Team. The satellite products he developed are among the most widely used by the scientific community and natural resource and agriculture stakeholders. He has published several high impact papers in journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.