Monitoring and Modeling of Global Changes: A Geomatics Perspective

The chapters in this book present state-of-the-art geomatics technologies applied in global environmental studies. This text provides the latest research findings and delivers complete references to related publications. This book will motivate the undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and practitioners to better understand the environmental changes with informed solutions.

Global Change studies are increasingly considered a vital source of information to understand the Earth Environment, especially in the framework of human-induced, climate change and land use transformation. Satellite Earth Observing systems and geomatics technologies provide a unique tool to monitor and model the changes, respectively. While the range of applications and innovative techniques are always increasing, this book provides a summary of key study cases where satellite data offers critical information to understand the usefulness of the geomatics technologies and global environmental issues. Geomatics technologies provide powerful tools to model and analyze the effects of those global environmental changes towards minimizing their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.

Dr. Jonathan Li is currently Professor of Geomatics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD degree in Geomatics Engineering from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Li’s research interests lie mainly in the areas of remote sensing and geographical information science. The focus is placed on use of the-state-of-art Earth observation and mobile mapping systems to derive spatial and attribute information to support effective urban-suburban planning and environmental management activities; to extract geometric information of urban structures for developing theories and models of urban morphology; to detect land use and land cover changes to study spatiotemporal dynamics and consequences of urbanization as a major form of global changes. He has been a guest editor for Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation and IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observation and Remote Sensing. He is currently serving as Vice Chair of ICA Commission on Mapping from Remote Sensor Images (2011-2015). He is co-author of more than 190 scientific papers and 5 books.

Dr. Yang is a tenured faculty member with t the Florida State University, USA. He received higher education from China, Holland, and USA. Dr. Yang’s research interest includes the development of remote sensing and geospatial techniques to support geographic inquiries in the urban and environmental domains. He has done research for NASA and received competitive grants from NSF, EPA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Yang has authored or co-authored more than 90 publications including five books by Springer, CRC/Taylor Francis and John Wiley. He has been a guest editor for Environmental Management, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Photogrammetrical Engineering and Remote Sensing, International Journal of Remote Sensing, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in AppliedEarth Observation and Remote Sensing, and Computer, Environment and Urban Systems. Dr. Yang currently serves the second term as Chair, Commission on Mapping from Remote Sensor Imagery of the International Cartographic Association (2011-2015) and Director of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (2012-2015).