New Remote Sensing Book Released

16 August 2010, 9:34am

“Remote Sensing of Vegetation, Principles, Techniques and Applications” by Hamlyn G Jones and Robin A Vaughan, Oxford University Press, July 2010, 353pp. £29.99.

This new book is aimed at senior undergraduates and new postgraduates to help them appreciate ways in which remote sensing can be used for the study and monitoring of vegetation. The authors believe that in order to be able to obtain the most benefit from a technique such as remote sensing, it is essential for the user to have a thorough understanding of the principles involved, rather than just apply procedures and techniques by rote. Correct interpretation of RS data to provide useful information requires a good understanding of the ways in which these data are obtained and especially of the inherent limitations.

Consequently, the first part of the book covers fundamental principles of RS, biological properties and detecting systems. Then follow several chapters that consider how to extract useful information from, mainly, spectral data. Then, after a consideration of possible ways in which errors may creep in, a number of applications are considered in depth. Topics covered include basic radiation physics, radiative properties of vegetation, soils and water, plant and canopy function, earth observation systems, basic image processing and image classification, multiangular sensing and modelling of radiation transfer properties, canopy mass and heat exchange, and sampling, error and scaling. Even though a quantitative approach is used, the emphasis throughout is on the key underlying principles and mathematical derivations are kept to a level accessible to most upper undergraduates, emphasizing the meaning rather than the mathematics. A number of useful appendices are included.

Check out the book on the catalogue

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