The management of data to understand complex and interwoven processes of sustainable development has been a great challenge for researchers, planners, and decision makers. Remote sensing and GIS-based policy decision support systems not only help them to solve spatially related environmental and socio-economic issues; they also provide a powerful tool for integrating spatial and non-spatial datasets with analytical and spatial models and knowledge domains. Recent advances in the modern spatial tools of remote sensing and GIS combined with advanced computation techniques have enhanced the efficiency and capabilities of policy development. This book expands the scientific knowledge base in various physical and socio-economic issues among scholars, planners, and decision makers for policy development and research regarding sustainable development. It also demonstrates the importance of modern spatial decision support tools of remote sensing and GIS to better understand sustainable development processes and policy development. Furthermore, the book discusses case studies providing new insights as to how remote sensing and GIS-based decision support systems contribute to understanding physical and socio-economic processes and developing pragmatic policy for sustainable development. This book covers land surface temperature, hydrological processes, terrain mapping, flood and landslide hazards, land use and land cover dynamics, crime hotspots, urban health issues, tourism, agriculture, forest management, flood mitigation, urban sprawl, and village information systems, among others. Readers will find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding and solving diverse physical and human issues for policy development related to sustainable planning and management.

As remote sensing data and methods have become increasingly complex and varied - and increasingly reliable - so have their uses in forest management. New algorithms have been developed in virtually every aspect of image analysis, from classification to enhancements to estimating parameters. Remote Sensing for Sustainable Forest Management reviews t

Presenting a summary of the development in boreal forest management, this book provides a progressive vision for some of the world's northern forests. It includes a selection of chapters based on the research conducted by the Sustainable Forest Management Network across Canada. It includes a number of case histories.

The great potential of remote sensing technologies for operational use in sustainable forest management is addressed in this book, which is the reprint of papers published in the Remote Sensing Special Issue “Operationalization of Remote Sensing Solutions for Sustainable Forest Management”. The studies come from three continents and cover multiple remote sensing systems (including terrestrial mobile laser scanning, unmanned aerial vehicles, airborne laser scanning, and satellite data acquisition) and a diversity of data processing algorithms, with a focus on machine learning approaches. The focus of the studies ranges from identification and characterization of individual trees to deriving national- or even continental-level forest attributes and maps. There are studies carefully describing exercises on the case study level, and there are also studies introducing new methodologies for transdisciplinary remote sensing applications. Even though most of the authors look forward to continuing their research, nearly all studies introduced are ready for operational use or have already been implemented in practical forestry.

This book discusses the problems in planning, building, and management strategies in the wake of application and expansion of remote sensing and GIS products in natural resources and infrastructure management. The book suggests proactive solutions to problems of natural resources and infrastructure management, providing alternatives for strategic planning, effective delivery, and growth perspectives. The uniqueness of the book is its broader spectrum of coverage with related interconnections and interdependences across science, engineering, and innovation. The book contains information that can be downscaled to the local level. Presenting a wide spectrum of viewpoints and approaches, the book is a collective of topics such as application to agriculture and forestry (land and landscape, agriculture, forestry management and deforestation), water resources and ecology (hydro-meteorological, climate diagnostics, and prognostics, water resources management, environment management, cross-scale ecology and resilience), urban management (urban planning, design, construction and operations of infrastructure, natural disasters, novel approaches to upgrade old infrastructure), hydro informatics, predictive and geospatial data analytics, synthesis, and management through the various processes, tools, and technologies.