Stacy A. C. Nelson

This textbook is one of the first to explain the fundamentals and applications of remote sensing at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Topics include definitions and a brief history of payloads and platforms, data acquisition and specifications, image processing techniques, data integration and spatial modeling, and a range of applications covering terrestrial, atmospheric, oceanographic and planetary disciplines. The policy and law issues of remote sensing and the future trends on the horizon are also covered. Remote sensing is an exciting, dynamic technology that is transforming the Earth sciences – terrestrial, atmospheric, and marine – as well as the practices of agriculture, disaster response, engineering, natural resources, providing evidence in legal cases and documented humanitarian crises, and many other fields. Increasingly, understanding of these techniques will be central to a number of disciplines, particularly as the technology advances.

This textbook is one of the first to explain the fundamentals and applications of remote sensing at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Topics include definitions and a brief history of payloads and platforms, data acquisition and specifications, image processing techniques, data integration and spatial modeling, and a range of applications covering terrestrial, atmospheric, oceanographic and planetary disciplines. The policy and law issues of remote sensing and the future trends on the horizon are also covered. Remote sensing is an exciting, dynamic technology that is transforming the Earth sciences – terrestrial, atmospheric, and marine – as well as the practices of agriculture, disaster response, engineering, natural resources, providing evidence in legal cases and documented humanitarian crises, and many other fields. Increasingly, understanding of these techniques will be central to a number of disciplines, particularly as the technology advances.

Remote Sensing provides information on how remote sensing relates to the natural resources inventory, management, and monitoring, as well as environmental concerns. It explains the role of this new technology in current global challenges. "Remote Sensing" will discuss remotely sensed data application payloads and platforms, along with the methodologies involving image processing techniques as applied to remotely sensed data. This title provides information on image classification techniques and image registration, data integration, and data fusion techniques. How this technology applies to natural resources and environmental concerns will also be discussed.

Remotely sensed data, in the form of digital images captured from spaceborne and airborne platforms, provide a rich analytical and observational source of information about the current status, as well as changes occurring in, on, and around the Earth’s surface. The data products, or simply images processed from these platforms, provide an additional advantage in that geographic areas or regions of interest can be revisited on a regular cycle. This revisit cycle allows geospatial analysts and natural resource managers to explore changing conditions over time.Image Processing and Data Analysis with ERDAS IMAGINE® explains the principles behind the processing of remotely sensed data in a simple, easy to understand, and "how-to" format. Organized as a step-by-step guide with exercises adapted from original research and using publicly available imagery, such as NASA Landsat, ESA Sentinel-2, Orthophotos, and others, this book gives readers the ability to quickly gain the practical experience needed to navigate the ERDAS IMAGINE® software as well as learn certain applications in Esri’s ArcMap ArcGIS for Desktop software and Quantum the GIS (QGIS) open source applications package. It also helps readers to easily move beyond the information presented in this book and tackle more advanced skills.Written by two professors with long experience in remote sensing and image processing, this book is a useful guide and reference for both undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, instructors, managers, and agency professionals who are involved in the study of Earth systems and the environment.