I am now making my Introduction to Radar Remote Sensing training course available to outside participants. This popular MSc module is intended to provide an introduction to the techniques used in radar remote sensing. With the increasing availability of satellite radar data it is becoming more important than ever to know how these systems work and to … Continue reading
This is a follow on post from an earlier one called “The forest as a lived environment”. One of my highlights of 2014 was getting my complimentary copy of Bill Liao’s book, “Forests: Reasons to be hopeful“. As well as offering some advice on the scientific content of a few of the figures, I also … Continue reading
Here is an extract from my recent eBook, Thirteen Short Chapters on Remote Sensing. It is the first part of “Chapter 4: Two things that can give remote sensing a bad name”. I thought it contentious enough to post as a blog entry to generate a bit of discussion. It also links back to previous … Continue reading
Originally posted on Carbomap news:
An interesting “taster” advert for Carbomap looking for lidar software developers. Please forward to people you think might be interested, or follow @Carbomap on Twitter. Carbomap news View original post
Warning: technical post for geeky radar folks! There is a common rule of thumb that I have often seen presented that states that the radar backscatter from a forest canopy mostly originates from scattering elements that are similar in size to the wavelength being used. Sometimes this is explained through attenuation effects of a full-cover … Continue reading
To abstract the real world – to “move away from the concrete world and move towards ideas and concepts” (Khan Academy lecture of “Abstract”) – is a skill shared by both artists and scientist. It is neatly illustrated in the process of abstracting trees for modelling satellite observations. In the science of remote sensing of forests we … Continue reading
As a group of scientists at the universities of Edinburgh and Maryland, and the FAO UN-REDD Programme, we’ve just published a short piece in Nature Climate Change magazine entitled “Radar backscatter is not a ‘direct measure’ of forest biomass”. The focus of this correspondance is “to contest the use of the term ‘direct measurement’ to … Continue reading
To misquote Muhammad Ali: Anyone who views the world the same at forty five as he did at thirty has wasted fifteen years of his life. When I was thirty I used to explain the radar backscatter-biomass curve like this: When radar backscatter is plotted against forest above ground biomass[1], there is a good positive … Continue reading
