Table of Content

1. Remote Sensing of the Environment
2. Electromagnetic Radiation Principles
3. History of Aerial Photography and Aerial Platforms
4. Aerial Photography - Vantage Point, Cameras, Filters, and Film
5. Elements of Visual Image Interpretation
6. Photogrammetry
7. Multispectral Remote Sensing Systems
8. Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing
9. Active and Passive Microwave Remote Sensing
10. LIDAR Remote Sensing (new)
11. Remote Sensing of Vegetation
12. Remote Sensing of Water
13. Remote Sensing the Urban Landscape
14. Remote Sensing of Soils, Minerals, and Geomorphology
15. In situ Spectral Reflectance Measurement (new)

Salient Features

• Examines how the reflected or emitted energy in the visible, near-infrared, middle-infrared, thermal infrared, and microwave portions of the spectrum can be collected by a variety of sensor systems and analyzed.
• Emphasizes how to remotely sense fundamental biophysical characteristics of the terrain such as precise location (x,y), height-depth (z), temperature, moisture content, chlorophyll content, surface roughness, etc., for vegetation, soils, minerals, water, ice, and the urban environment.
• Enables readers from many disciplines such as geography, agriculture, forestry, marine science, and geology to adapt the remote sensing principles and technology to their own application. For example, the principles associated with remote sensing of vegetation can be applied to agriculture, wetland, and/or forests. Methods of extracting urban infrastructure and population characteristics are of value to geographers, urban planners, transportation engineers, etc.
• Takes the approach that the detailed digital image processing principles should be taught in a separate course, not in the introductory remote sensing or airphoto interpretation course.
• Examples include remote sensing of vegetation biomass, chlorophyll a mapping, pollution monitoring, digital elevation model creation, surface temperature measurement, and land-use mapping.