This edited volume focuses on the use of remote sensing techniques to assess and monitor mountainous ecosystems in Africa, with a focus on tracking changes related to climate change and human activity. The book is timely, as the interaction of mountain environmental dynamics with conservation and sustainability is an under-researched issue. The chapters in this volume use remotely sensed data to study a variety of topics related to mountains and their ecosystems, including but not limited to vegetation, energy systems, environmental hazards, ecosystem services, diseases, climatic shifts, geological formations and geomorphological dynamics. The ability to monitor, assess and analyze mountainous regions is aided by the availability of remote sensing products such as optical and microwave sensors and low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The works presented here push the frontier of knowledge on mountain studies and will help shape local, national and global assessments and policies, including efforts toward the achievement of the African Agenda 2063. The book will be of interest to researchers and students in remote sensing, geography, ecology and sustainability, as well as to government organizations and conservation specialists.

This book gathers selected and expanded contributions presented at the 5th Symposium on Space Optical Instruments and Applications, which was held in Beijing, China, on September 5-7, 2018. This conference series is organized by the Sino-Holland Space Optical Instruments Laboratory, a cooperative platform between China and the Netherlands. The symposium focused on key technological problems regarding optical instruments and their applications in a space context. It covered the latest developments, experiments and results on the theory, instrumentation and applications of space optics. The book is split into five main sections: The first covers optical remote sensing system design, the second focuses on advanced optical system design, and the third addresses remote sensor calibration and measurement. Remote sensing data processing and information extraction are then presented, followed by a final section on remote sensing data applications.

Our four volumes propose to present innovative thematic applications implemented using the open source software QGIS. These are applications that use remote sensing over continental surfaces. The four volumes detail applications of remote sensing over continental surfaces, with a first one discussing applications for agriculture. A second one presents applications for forest, a third presents applications for the continental hydrology, and finally the last volume details applications for environment and risk issues.

This book, the first of a two-volume set, focuses on the basic physical principles of blackbody radiometry and describes artificial sources of blackbody radiation, widely used as sources of optical radiation, whose energy characteristics can be calculated on the base of fundamental physical laws. Following a review of radiometric quantities, radiation laws, and radiative heat transfer, it introduces the basic principles of blackbody radiators design, details of their practical implementation, and methods of measuring their defining characteristics, as well as metrological aspects of blackbody-based measurements. Chapters are dedicated to the effective emissivity concept, methods of increasing effective emissivities, their measurement and modeling using the Monte Carlo method, techniques of blackbody radiators heating, cooling, isothermalization, and measuring their temperature. An extensive and comprehensive reference source, this book is of considerable value to students, researchers, and engineers involved in any aspect of blackbody radiometry.

This book reviews the spaceborne and airborne remote sensing of clouds including cloud lidar and radar data analysis, snow and soil reflectance spectroscopy, and single light scattering by nonspherical scatterers. Providing deep insights into the latest technologies, it is a valuable resource for scientists and postgraduate students alike.

This book presents a comprehensive selection of applications employed in environmental remote sensing using optical and thermal infrared satellite-sensors aiming to map natural resources, crops, groundwater, surface water, aquatic ecosystem, land degradation, air quality, renewable energy, regional resources, and climate-related geophysical processes. The technologies presented in this book also include satellite images, space-borne radar sensors focusing on the most versatile one, data from synthetic aperture radar (SAR), scatterometers and radar altimeters in Egypt. This volume also presents a thorough explanation of the remote sensing role showing physical fundamentals of the climate change phenomenon including gas emissions, and the impact on resources concerning the sustainable development of Egypt. Besides, the book includes an analysis of oil pollution in both Mediterranean and Red Seas This book is intended for environmental policymakers working in Egypt as well as scientists working with remote sensing technologies in highly populated arid regions.

This volume gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of geographic information systems and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies, as presented by leading researchers and engineers at the 1st International Conference on Unmanned Aerial System in Geomatics (UASG), held in Roorkee, India on April 6-7, 2019. It covers highly diverse topics, including photogrammetry and remote sensing, surveying, UAV manufacturing, geospatial data sensing, UAV processing, visualization, and management, UAV applications and regulations, geo-informatics and geomatics. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaboration among different specialists.

This book introduces readers to the algorithm of Compass & GPS dual-system software receivers, and to the software implementation. It provides detailed descriptions of key theories in the fields of signal processing, communication, control, and signal estimation. The book is based on the author's extensive experience in GNSS receiver design. The MATLAB script developed for this book demonstrates most of the key theories and equips the reader with excellent tools for practicing them.

This book summarizes the author's research resulted in developing the satellite radiothermovision approach which allows retrieving dynamical and energy characteristics of atmospheric mesoscale and synoptic-scale processes based on a close scheme of satellite passive radiometry data processing. The book introduces new applications of the satellite passive microwave observations to detailed systematic study of tropical cyclones' evolution, climatology and characteristics of atmospheric river, parameters of global atmospheric circulation and their variations on climatically significant scales. The results presented in the book demonstrate a clear relation between the convergence/divergence of latent heat from the lower atmosphere to the center of tropical cyclone with variations of its intensity and provide a better insight into the tropical cyclone dynamical energy balance based on remote data.

The International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling is the premier research forum for Geographic Information Science. The Symposium is particularly strong in respect to identifying significant new developments in this field. The papers published in this volume are carefully refereed by an international programme committee composed of experts in various areas of GIS who are especially renowned for their scientific innovation.

One of the major difficulties in predicting the capacity of pipe piles in sand has resulted from a lack of understanding of the physical processes that control the behavior of piles during installation and loading.

This monograph presents a detailed blue print for developing experimental facilities necessary to identify these processes. These facilities include a unique instrumented double-walled pipe-pile that is used to delineate the frictional stresses acting against the external and internal surfaces of the pile. The pile is fitted with miniature pore-pressure transducers to monitor the generation of pore water pressure during installation and loading. A fast automatic laboratory pile hammer capable of representing the phenomena that occur during pile driving was also developed and used.

This book elaborates on the physical principles of polarization remote sensing. It explains the reflective characteristics of surface objects and atmosphere separately, including theory, experiment, instrument and application. In addition, it introduces how polarization remote sensing works in advanced research programs as it can be used in aviation, astronomy, disaster risk prevention and navigation fields. This book serves as a fundamental and comprehensive reference for researchers and students.

Today, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have a pervasive presence in almost every aspect of the management of water. There is no question that the collection of big data from sensing and the insights gained by smart analytics can bring massive benefits. This book focuses on new perspectives for the monitoring, assessment and control of water systems, based on tools and concepts originating from the ICT sector. It presents a portrait of up-to-date sensing techniques for water, and introduces concepts and implications with the analysis of the acquired data. Particular attention is given to the advancements in developing novel devices and data processing approaches. The chapters guide the reader through multiple disciplinary contexts, without aiming to be exhaustive, but with the effort to present relevant topics in such a highly multi-disciplinary framework. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and stakeholders at various levels.

"Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental Research "is the basis for advanced Earth Observation (EO) datasets used in environmental monitoring and research. Now that there are a number of satellites in orbit, EO has become imperative in today s sciences, weather and natural disaster prediction. This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse studies on remote sensing and GIS, from a theoretical background to its applications, represented through various case studies and the findings of new models. The book offers a comprehensive range of contributions by well-known scientists from around the world and opens a new window for students in presenting interdisciplinary and methodological resources on the latest research. It explores various key aspects and offers state-of-the-art research in a simplified form, describing remote sensing and GIS studies for those who are new to the field, as well as for established researchers."

Diminishing water resources are becoming of increasing concern because in many countries the sources of drinking water are close to being exhausted. Therefore, there is an urgent need to study and assess the various components of global water resources, of which freshwater lakes are one of the most important. This book discusses contemporary limnological problems on a local, regional and global scale with special emphasis on the application of remote-sensing techniques to monitor lake dynamics, thermodynamics, biodynamics and water quality. An interactive approach is used to assess various processes from both the numerical modelling and observational standpoints. The authors recommend a combined use of in situ and remote-sensing data, giving a specific comparative analysis of the lakes of north-western Russia and the American Great Lakes as an illustration. The role of GIS is discussed and emphasised.

This book provides applications of wireless sensor networks (WSN) in environmental monitoring, with an emphasis on livestock disease detection and agricultural management in Africa to aid farmers. This proposed system entails current and innovative monitoring technologies intended to improve agricultural conditions in Africa, with a focus on Botswana, and addresses the Internet of Things (IoT) as a set of remote monitoring protocols using WSNs to improve and ensure proper environmental maintenance. In this book, the author introduces WSNs, and how the IoT can be applied to develop a system of "smart agriculture" in Africa, taking into account livestock health, climate change impacts on crops and wildlife, and technological innovations in response to climate change such as windmills and solar panels. The book will be interesting to students and researchers in engineering and life sciences, as well as practitioners working with sensing technologies for agricultural monitoring and improvement.

This book focuses on monitoring and assessing various environmental processes in Tunisia using state-of-the-art remote sensing and GIS technologies. In addition to addressing the diversity of Tunisian landscapes and providing spatial analysis of natural, cultivated and urbanized environments. It presents and discusses several case studies on integrated RS / GIS approaches for mapping, modeling, monitoring and evaluation. Moreover, in this volume authored by experts in the topic from Tunisia and other countries, authors assess the agro-environmental applications from Tunisia and offer different methods and applications to environmental processes and risks including drought, degradation, flood, planning, Yield estimation, dust storm detection, dry land vulnerability, wetland dynamics and others. The material presented here will help decision-makers plan sustainable landscape and agricultural management policies that preserve biodiversity and contribute to achieving sustainability goals and for researchers, it will expose methodological approaches used in different fields of research. Graduate students and Practionioner engineers working in the field of RS/GIS will also benefit from the book. The book ends with a set of conclusions and recommendations to support researchers underscoring the need for further research in this area.

Volcanoes have terrified and, at the same time, fascinated civilizations for thousands of years. Many aspects of volcanoes, most notably the eruptive processes and the compositional variations of magma, have been widely investigated for several decades and today constitute the core of any volcanology textbook. Nevertheless, in the last two decades, boosted by the availability of volcano monitoring data, there has been an increasing interest in the pre-eruptive processes related to the shallow accumulation and to the transfer of magma approaching the surface, as well as in the resulting structure of volcanoes. These are innovative and essential aspects of modern volcanology and, as driving volcanic unrest, their understanding also improves hazard assessment and eruption forecasting. So far, the significant progress made in unravelling these volcano-tectonic processes has not been supported by a comprehensive overview. This monograph aims at filling this gap, describing the pre-eruptive processes related to the structure, deformation and tectonics of volcanoes, at the local and regional scale, in any tectonic setting. The monograph is organized into three sections ("Fundamentals", "Magma migration towards the surface" and "The regional perspective"), consisting of thirteen chapters that are lavishly illustrated. The reader is accompanied in a journey within the volcano factory, discovering the processes associated with the shallow accumulation of magma and its transfer towards the surface, how these control the structure of volcanoes and their activity and, ultimately, improve our ability to estimate hazard and forecast eruption. The potential readership includes any academic, researcher and upper undergraduate student interested in volcanology, magma intrusions, structural geology, tectonics, geodesy, as well as geology and geophysics in general.

This book focuses on gyro-free inertial navigation technology, which is used to measure not only linear motion parameters but also angular rates. Since no gyroscopes are used, the key technologies, such as initial alignment, attitude resolution, and error calibration, are very different than those used in traditional methods. Discussing each key technology in gyro-free inertial navigation system (GFINS) manufacture in a separate chapter, the book features easy-to-understand, detailed illustrations, to allow all those involved in inertial navigation to gain a better grasp of GFINS manufacture, including accelerometer setting principles; initial alignment; quaternion-based, attitude resolution algorithms; and accelerometer de-noise methods.

Remote Sensing of Ocean and Coastal Environments advances the scientific understanding and application of technologies to address a variety of areas relating to sustainable development, including environmental systems analysis, environmental management, clean processes, green chemistry and green engineering. Through each contributed chapter, the book covers ocean remote sensing, ocean color monitoring, modeling biomass and the carbon of oceanic ecosystems, sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface salinity, ocean monitoring for oil spills and pollutions, coastal erosion and accretion measurement. This book is aimed at those with a common interest in oceanography techniques, sustainable development and other diverse backgrounds within earth and ocean science fields. This book is ideal for academicians, scientists, environmentalists, meteorologists, environmental consultants and computing experts working in the areas of earth and ocean sciences.

Space-time analysis is a rapidly growing research frontier in geography, GIS, and GIScience. Advances in integrated GPS/GIS technologies, the availability of large datasets (over time and space), and increased capacity to manage, integrate, model and visualize complex data in (near) real time, offer the GIS and geography communities extraordinary opportunities to begin to integrate sophisticated space-time analysis and models in the study of complex environmental and social systems, from climate change to infectious disease transmission.

This volume specifically focuses on research frontiers, comparative research, and research and application interactions in this field in the US and China, arguably the two most dynamic loci for this work today. The contributions to this book, by top researchers in China and the US, productively highlight the differences and similarities in approaches and directions for space-time analysis in the two countries. In light of the recent rapid progress in GIScience research on space-time integration in both countries, the book s focus on research frontiers in these two countries will attract great interest in both countries and in other parts of the world as well as among related disciplines. In addition, the book also explores the impact of collaborative research and publications underway in this area between the US and China and will provide an overview of these collaborative efforts and programs.

This book will not only be of interest to university-based GIS researchers and students, but also to those interested in this new area of research and applications like researchers and developers in business, internet mapping and GIS and location based services (LBS)."

Globalization is not a new phenomenon, but it is posing new challenges to humans and natural ecosystems in the 21st century. From climate change to increasingly mobile human populations to the global economy, the relationship between humans and their environment is being modified in ways that will have long-term impacts on ecological health, biodiversity, ecosystem goods and services, population vulnerability, and sustainability. These changes and challenges are perhaps nowhere more evident than in island ecosystems. Buffeted by rising ocean temperatures, extreme weather events, sea-level rise, climate change, tourism, population migration, invasive species, and resource limitations, islands represent both the greatest vulnerability to globalization and also the greatest scientific opportunity to study the significance of global changes on ecosystem processes, human-environment interactions, conservation, environmental policy, and island sustainability. In this book, we study islands through the lens of Land Cover/Land Use Change (LCLUC) and the multi-scale and multi-thematic drivers of change. In addition to assessing the key processes that shape and re-shape island ecosystems and their land cover/land use changes, the book highlights measurement and assessment methods to characterize patterns and trajectories of change and models to examine the social-ecological drivers of change on islands. For instance, chapters report on the results of a meta-analysis to examine trends in published literature on islands, a satellite image time-series to track changes in urbanization, social surveys to support household analyses, field sampling to represent the state of resources and their limitations on islands, and dynamic systems models to link socio-economic data to LCLUC patterns. The authors report on a diversity of islands, conditions, and circumstances that affect LCLUC patterns and processes, often informed through perspectives rooted, for instance, in conservation, demography, ecology, economics, geography, policy, and sociology.

This book presents essential information on modern location science - in a word, all you need to know about location. The second edition of this handbook has been fully revised throughout, with numerous updates and chapters added, to offer an even more comprehensive overview of methods and applications. The book is divided into three parts: basic concepts, advanced concepts and applications. Written by the most respected specialists in the field and thoroughly reviewed by the editors, it first lays out the fundamental problems in location science and provides readers with basic background information on location theory. Part II covers advanced models and concepts, broadening and expanding on the content presented in Part I. It also discusses important tools to help readers grasp and solve real-world location problems. Part III focuses on the links between location science and other areas like GIS, telecommunications, healthcare, rapid transit networks, districting problems and disaster events, and presents a wide range of applications to allow readers to understand the role of facility location in such areas and learn how to handle real-world location problems. The book is intended for researchers working on theory and applications involving location problems and models. It is also suitable as a textbook for graduate courses on facility location.