Atlas of Remote Sensing for World Heritage: China describes the UNESCO Natural and Cultural Heritage Sites in China and focuses on the interrelationship between culture and nature as well as on the breadth and complexity of China's world heritage sites. It emphasizes the application of space technology to world heritage, offering a vivid portrayal of China's forty world heritage sites and their surrounding environments by using multi-band, multi-resolution, multi-temporal spaceborne and airborne remote sensing data and 3D models. The book is a valuable resource for researchers in fields related to world heritage and to anyone with an appreciation of natural beauty and cultural landmarks. Professor Guo Huadong is the Director-General of the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

This book analyses the magnificent imperial necropolises of ancient China from the perspective of Archaeoastronomy, a science which takes into account the landscape in which ancient monuments are placed, focusing especially but not exclusively on the celestial aspects. The power of the Chinese emperors was based on the so-called Mandate of Heaven: the rulers were believed to act as intermediaries between the sky gods and the Earth, and consequently, the architecture of their tombs, starting from the world-famous mausoleum of the first emperor, was closely linked to the celestial cycles and to the cosmos. This relationship, however, also had to take into account various other factors and doctrines, first the Zhao-Mu doctrine in the Han period and later the various forms of Feng Shui. As a result, over the centuries, diverse sacred landscapes were constructed. Among the sites analysed in the book are the “pyramids” of Xi’an from the Han dynasty, the mountain tombs of the Tang dynasty, and the Ming and Qing imperial tombs. The book explains how considerations such as astronomical orientation and topographical orientation according to the principles of Feng Shui played a fundamental role at these sites.

This volume focuses on ‘fittingness’ as an ethical-aesthetical idea, and in particular examines how the concept is beneficial for environmental ethics. It brings together an innovative set of contributions to argue that fittingness is a significant but under-investigated facet of human ethical deliberation with both ethical and aesthetic dimensions. In widely diverse matters – from architecture to table manners – individuals and communities make decisions based on ‘fittingness’, also expressed in related terms, such as appropriateness, prudence, temperance, and mutuality. In the realm of environmental ethics, fittingness denotes a relation between conscious embodied persons and their habitats and is of relevance to judgements about how humans shape, and take up with, the non-human environment, and hence to ethical decisions about the development and use of the environment and non-human creatures. As such, fittingness can be of great benefit in reframing human relationships to the non-human, stimulating a way of living in the world that is fitting to the preservation of its fruitfulness, goodness, beauty, and truth.

Essential Image Processing and GIS for Remote Sensing is an accessible overview of the subject and successfully draws together these three key areas in a balanced and comprehensive manner. The book provides an overview of essential techniques and a selection of key case studies in a variety of application areas. Key concepts and ideas are introduced in a clear and logical manner and described through the provision of numerous relevant conceptual illustrations. Mathematical detail is kept to a minimum and only referred to where necessary for ease of understanding. Such concepts are explained through common sense terms rather than in rigorous mathematical detail when explaining image processing and GIS techniques, to enable students to grasp the essentials of a notoriously challenging subject area. The book is clearly divided into three parts, with the first part introducing essential image processing techniques for remote sensing. The second part looks at GIS and begins with an overview of the concepts, structures and mechanisms by which GIS operates. Finally the third part introduces Remote Sensing Applications. Throughout the book the relationships between GIS, Image Processing and Remote Sensing are clearly identified to ensure that students are able to apply the various techniques that have been covered appropriately. The latter chapters use numerous relevant case studies to illustrate various remote sensing, image processing and GIS applications in practice.

This two-volume set CCIS 961 and 962 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Transdisciplinary Multispectral Modeling and Cooperation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, TMM_CH 2018, held in Athens, Greece, in October 2018. 73 revised full papers of 237 submissions are included in these volumes. The papers of the first volume are organized in the following topical sections: the project of the rehabilitation of Holy Sepulchre’s Holy Aedicule as a pilot multispectral, multidimensional, novel approach through transdisciplinary and cooperation in the protection of monuments; digital heritage; novel educational approach for the preservation of monuments; resilience to climate change and natural hazards; conserving sustainably the materiality of structures and architectural authenticity; and interdisciplinary preservation and management of cultural heritage. And the papers of the second volume are organized in the following topical sections: sustainable preservation and management lessons learnt on emblematic monuments; cross-discipline earthquake protection and structural assessment of monuments; cultural heritage and pilgrimage tourism; reuse, circular economy and social participation as a leverage for the sustainable preservation and management of historic cities; inception – inclusive cultural heritage in Europe through 3D semantic modelling; heritage at risk; and advanced and non-destructive techniques for diagnosis, design and monitoring.

Over the last decade the field of spaceborne imaging radar remote sensing has advanced to the point where many new applications have become possible. Synthetic aperture radar with its all-weather and day-night capability has become one of the most sophisticated technologies for earth and planetary observation. The deployment of advanced experimental systems has allowed radar imaging data to feed into the analysis of environmental and geophysical problems: whether agricultural, land use, forestry, hydrology, geology, mineral exploration, urbanization, archaeology, natural hazards, oceanography or global change. This atlas provides a set of examples of high quality remote sensing work carried out with this leading technology in China, under the auspices of the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in collaboration with the USA, European Space Agency, Japan and the former USSR. These examples are discussed, compared with ground truth, and analyzed. It includes applications, data analysis, algorithm development, modeling and backscatter behavior analysis.

This book collects 15 papers written by renowned scholars from across the globe that showcase the forefront research in Earth observation (EO), remote sensing (RS), and geoscientific ground investigations to study archaeological records and cultural heritage. Archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, remote sensing, and archaeometry experts share their methodologies relying on a wealth of techniques and data including, but not limited to: very high resolution satellite images from optical and radar space-borne sensors, air-borne surveys, geographic information systems (GIS), archaeological fieldwork, and historical maps. A couple of the contributions highlight the value of noninvasive and nondestructive laboratory analyses (e.g., neutron diffraction) to reconstruct ancient manufacturing technologies, and of geological ground investigations to corroborate hypotheses of historical events that shaped cultural landscapes. Case studies encompass famous UNESCO World Heritage Sites (e.g., the Nasca Lines in Peru), remote and yet-to-discover archaeological areas in tropical forests in central America, European countries, south Asian changing landscapes, and environments which are arid nowadays but were probably full of woody vegetation in the past. Finally, the reader can learn about the state-of-the-art of education initiatives to train site managers in the use of space technologies in support of their activities, and can understand the legal aspects involved in the application of EO and RS to address current challenges of African heritage preservation.