Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Hydrology XIV

Introduction - This proceedings volume contains papers presented during the conference on Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Hydrology XIV. The conference was part of the 19th International Symposium on Remote Sensing sponsored by SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. The symposium was held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, from 24th to 26th of September 2012. The conference is dedicated to providing rapid dissemination of scientific and technical information, and attracted scientists and professionals from throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. More than 30 oral and 30 poster presentations were given, covering a broad range of topics in the field of remote sensing applications in environmental science. The program was organized according to major themes, with 10 sessions on Agriculture: Leaf Area Index, Crop monitoring (2), Vegetation; Ecosystems: Water Bodies; Hydrology: Hydrology, Snow, Energy Balance, Thermal Remote Sensing, Water Content. The poster presentations also had good representation from the three major themes. The presentations described both fundamental and applications-based research activities from modelling, to laboratory and field experiments, to operational applications. We extend our thanks to the Session chairs (Francesco Vuolo, Institute of Surveying, Remote Sensing and Land Information – University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, and John H. Prueger, Agricultural Research Service – United States Department of Agriculture). The oral program also included four invited presentations: John H. Prueger of United States Department of Agriculture (USA) gave a presentation on the subject “Sources of uncertainty for eddy covariance measurements over heterogeneous surfaces in a semi-arid region: impact to remote sensing”; Giuseppe Ciraolo of Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy) gave a presentation on the subject “Mapping evapotranspiration on vineyards: a comparison between Penman-Monteith and Energy Balance approaches for operational purposes”; Massimo Menenti of Technische Univ. Delft (Netherlands) gave a presentation on the subject “Hyperspectral imaging: do information content, land cover classification, sensitivity analysis and inverse modeling of spectral reflectance lead to the same set of optimal spectral bands?”; Shahid Habib of NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr. (USA) gave a presentation on the subject “Overview of USAID-World Bank-NASA collaboration to address water management issues in the MENA region”. We also thank the presenters for their efforts and to the participants for their insightful questions and discussions. Special thanks are also due to the host city for the excellent venue, to Joel Shields the Proceedings Coordinator, to Alex Pulchart Rusova the Program Coordinator and to the SPIE organizational staff for their support prior to, during, and after the symposium. We look forward to an even more successful and exciting conference in 2013 in Dresden (Germany). The Chairs and Editors Christopher Neale Antonino Maltes