Enhancing Stewardship of Earth Through Remote Sensing

Earth is humanity’s only home and environment, and living on and with Earth requires increasingly accurate knowledge of the many hazards posed by our planet and the finite natural resources we rely on to prosper. Proper stewardship of Earth starts with understanding of the different Earth system components, including the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the solid Earth, as well as their often-complex interactions. As the world’s population has roughly doubled over the last 50 years and is expected to grow by nearly two billion persons in the next 30 years (United Nations 2023), more people are being exposed to a variety of geohazards and depend on a limited supply of natural resources that are increasingly challenging to access. Characterization of natural hazards and resources requires knowledge of materials and processes above, at, and below the Earth’s surface. Keeping up with the need to recognize, characterize, and quantify these hazards and resources requires comprehensive and accurate data. Increasingly, remote sensing from satellite, airborne, and ship-based platforms has become the tool of choice to comprehensively monitor the Earth. In this book, Remote Sensing for Characterization of Geohazards and Natural Resources, edited by Estelle Chaussard, Cathleen Jones, Jingyi Ann Chen, and Andrea Donnellan, the focus is on a variety of remote sensing techniques and their often integrated and cross-disciplinary use to study geohazards and natural resources at the surface and shallow subsurface of our planet.