Physical Principles of Remote Sensing

Fully updated and containing significant new material on photography, laser profiling and image processing, the third edition of this popular textbook covers a broad range of remote sensing applications and techniques across the Earth, environmental and planetary sciences. It focuses on physical principles, giving students a deeper understanding of remote sensing systems and their possibilities, while remaining accessible to those with less mathematical training by providing a step-by-step approach to quantitative topics. Boxed examples, additional photos and numerous colour images engage students and show them how the theory relates to the many real-world applications. Chapter summaries, review questions and additional problems allow students to check their understanding of key concepts and practise handling real data for themselves. Supplementary online material includes links to freely available software, animations, computer programs, colour images and other web-based resources of interest.

W. G. Rees is a senior lecturer at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, where he has taught and researched in the field of remote sensing for over twenty years. He has been active in developing and applying remote sensing methods to the mapping and monitoring of the polar regions, having conducted fieldwork in arctic regions of Europe and Asia and in Svalbard. For the past few years he has been joint coordinator of PPS Arctic, a major programme to investigate the characteristics and behaviour of the arctic treeline as part of the International Polar Year, and he is also a member of the ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing) working group on LiDAR. Dr Rees has published several books on remote sensing, including the first and second editions of Physical Principles of Remote Sensing (1990, 2001, Cambridge University Press), The Remote Sensing Data Book (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Remote Sensing of Glaciers (with P. Pellikka, Taylor and Francis, 2010). He was made a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 1996 and is a member of the Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Society.