xviii Preface
the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA), and the Instituto
Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) of Brazil. Many private
entities have launched and operated satellites. ese government
and private agencies and enterprises launched and operated a
wide array of satellites and sensors that captured the data of the
planet Earth in various regions of the electromagnetic spectrum
and in various spatial, radiometric, and temporal resolutions,
routinely and repeatedly. However, the real thrust for remote
sensing advancement came during the last decade of the twenti-
eth century and the beginning of the twenty-rst century. ese
initiatives included a launch of a series of new-generation EO
satellites to gather data more frequently and routinely, release
of pathnder data sets, web enabling the data for free by many
agencies (e.g., USGS release of the entire Landsat archives as
well as real-time acquisitions of the world for free dissemina-
tion by web-enabling), and providing processed data ready to
users (e.g., surface reectance products of moderate-resolution
imaging spectroradiometer [MODIS]). Other eorts like Google
Earth made remote sensing more popular and brought in a new
platform for easy visualization and navigation of remote sens-
ing data. Advances in computer hardware and soware made it
possible to handle Big Data. Crowdsourcing, web access, cloud
computing, and mobile platforms added a new dimension to
how remote sensing data are used. Integration with global posi-
tioning systems (GPS) and global navigation satellite systems
(GNSS) and inclusion of digital secondary data (e.g., digital
elevation, precipitation, temperature) in analysis have made
remote sensing much more powerful. Collectively, these initia-
tives provided a new vision in making remote sensing data more
popular, widely understood, and increasingly used for diverse
applications, hitherto considered dicult. e free availability
of archival data when combined with more recent acquisitions
has also enabled quantitative studies of change over space and
time. e Remote Sensing Handbook is targeted to capture these
vast advances in data, methods, and applications, so a remote
sensing student, scientist, or a professional practitioner will have
the most comprehensive, all-encompassing reference material in
one place.
Modern-day remote sensing technology, science, and appli-
cations are growing exponentially. is growth is a result of a
combination of factors that include (1) advances and innova-
tions in data capture, access, and delivery (e.g., web enabling,
cloud computing, crowdsourcing); (2) an increasing number of
satellites and sensors gathering data of the planet, repeatedly
and routinely, in various portions of the electromagnetic spec-
trum as well as in an array of spatial, radiometric, and temporal
resolutions; (3) eorts at integrating data from multiple satel-
lites and sensors (e.g., sentinels with Landsat); (4) advances in
data normalization, standardization, and harmonization (e.g.,
delivery of data in surface reectance, intersensor calibration);
(5) methods and techniques for handling very large data vol-
umes (e.g., global mosaics); (6) quantum leap in computer hard-
ware and soware capabilities (e.g., ability to process several
terabytes of data); (7) innovation in methods, approaches, and
techniques leading to sophisticated algorithms (e.g., spectral
matching techniques, and automated cropland classication
algorithms); and (8) development of new spectral indices to
quantify and study specic land and water parameters (e.g.,
hyperspectral vegetation indices or HVIs). As a result of these
all-around developments, remote sensing science is today very
mature and is widely used in virtually every discipline of the
earth sciences for quantifying, mapping, modeling, and moni-
toring our planet Earth. Such rapid advances are captured in a
number of remote sensing and earth science journals. However,
students, scientists, and practitioners of remote sensing science
and applications have signicant diculty gathering a complete
understanding of the various developments and advances that
have taken place as a result of their vastness spread across the
last 50 years. erefore, the chapters in the Remote Sensing
Handbook are designed to give a whole picture of scientic and
technological advances of the last 50years.
Today, the science, art, and technology of remote sensing are
truly ubiquitous and increasingly part of everyone’s everyday
life, oen without the user knowing it. Whether looking at your
own home or farm (e.g., see the following gure), helping you
navigate when you drive, visualizing a phenomenon occurring
in a distant part of the world (e.g., see the following gure), mon-
itoring events such as droughts and oods, reporting weather,
detecting and monitoring troop movements or nuclear sites,
studying deforestation, assessing biomass carbon, addressing
disasters such as earthquakes or tsunamis, and a host of other
applications (e.g., precision farming, crop productivity, water
productivity, deforestation, desertication, water resources
management), remote sensing plays a pivotal role. Already,
many new innovations are taking place. Companies such as
the Planet Labs and Skybox are planning to capture very-high-
spatial- resolution imagery (typically, sub-meter to 5 meters),
even videos from space using a large number of microsatellite
constellations. ere are others planning to launch a constella-
tion of hyperspectral or other sensors. Just as the smartphone
and social media connected the world, remote sensing is making
the world our backyard. No place goes unobserved and no event
gets reported without a satellite or other kinds of remote sensing
images or their derivatives. is is how true liberation for any
technology and science occurs.
Google Earth can be used to seamlessly navigate and
precisely locate any place on Earth, oen with very-high-
spatial-resolution data (VHRI; submeters to 5 m) from satel-
lites such as IKONOS, QuickBird, and GeoEye (Note: the image
below is from one of the VHRI). Here, the editor-in-chief (EiC)
of this handbook located his village home (enkabail) and
surroundings that have land covers such as secondary rain-
forests, lowland paddy farms, areca nut plantations, coconut
plantations, minor roads, walking routes, open grazing lands,
and minor streams (typically, rst and second order) (note: land
cover detailed is based on the ground knowledge of the EiC).
e rst primary school attended by him is located precisely.
Precise coordinates (13 degree 45 minutes 39.22 seconds north-
ern latitude, 75 degrees 06 minutes 56.03 seconds eastern lon-
gitude) of enkabail’s village house on the planet and the date
© 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC