TITLE:
Remote Sensing Applications: Beyond Land-Use and Land-Cover Change
AUTHORS:
Chris W. Baynard
KEYWORDS:
Remote Sensing Applications; Mapping; Monitoring; Detection; Earth Observation
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Remote Sensing,
Vol.2 No.3,
August
20,
2013
ABSTRACT: Remotely sensed (RS) imagery is increasingly being adopted in
investigations and applications outside of traditional land-use land-cover
change (LUCC) studies. This is due to the increased awareness by governments,
NGOs and Industry that earth observation data provide important and useful
spatial and temporal information that can be used to make better decisions,
design policies and address problems that range in scale from local to global.
Additionally, citizens are increasingly adopting spatial analysis into their
work as they utilize a suite of readily available geospatial tools. This paper
examines some of the ways remotely sensed images and derived maps are being
extended beyond LUCC to areas such as fire modeling, coastal and marine
applications, infrastructure and urbanization, archeology, and to ecological,
or infrastructure footprint analysis. Given
the interdisciplinary approach of such work, this paper organizes selected studies
into broad categories identified above. Findings demonstrate that RS data and
technologies are being widely used in many fields, ranging from fishing to war
fighting. As technology improves, costs go down, quality increases and data
become increasingly available, greater numbers of organizations and local
citizens will be using RS in important everyday applications.