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Tropical Cyclone Funso

Tropical Cyclone Funso

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Our Mission

The Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society seeks to advance science and technology in geoscience, remote sensing and related fields using conferences, education, and other resources.

Fields of Interest

The fields of interest of the Society are the theory, concepts, and techniques of science and engineering as they apply to the remote sensing of the earth, oceans, atmosphere, and space, as well as the processing, interpretation and dissemination of this information.

  • Desert

    The advances of desertification is a menace to agriculture and urban settlements in many areas of the world. Urban areas, natural resources and crop monitoring and critical for our development and sustainability.

  • Desert

    Oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth's surface and contain 97 percent of the planet's water. Oceans contain the largest food and energy stocks, necessary for the development of an increasing population, and play an integral role in many of the Earth's systems including climate and weather.

  • Desert

    Katrina’s hurricane is a clear example of a devastating event due to an uncontrolled atmospheric event. Predicting hurricane trajectories helps save hundreds of lives and goods.

  • Desert

    The cryosphere contains an immense amount of solid water. During the past decades the amount of ice has been continuously decreasing, while the mean sea level has been slightly rising. Cryospheric monitoring provides the clues of the past of our planet, and may provide a clear indication of its future.

  • Desert

    Data gathered from a number of remote sensors must be processed before it is converted into usefull information. Classification techniques help in this process.

  • Desert

    Remote Sensors are all based on some sort of electromagnetic phenomena (scattering or emission). Understanding the propagation of the electromagnetic waves and their interaction with matter is critical to design new sensors and understand the measurements.

  • Desert

    Active and passive sensors, either in the microwave or in the visible and infrared parts of the spectrum are systematically used to gather data of a number of physical phenomena from ground, airplane and space.

  • Desert

    Information (mainly from remote sensors) for the benefit of society is the moto of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

Message From Our President

jon

The year 2011 has been very successful for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS). The GRSS continues to do well on all fronts. The GRSS publication portfolio is excelling under the strong leadership of VP of Publications, Prof. Wooil Moon.  Our three journal publications, TGRS, GRSL and J-STARS, continue to be very successful in terms of quality, timeliness and relevance for the remote sensing community. The submission rate has increased for all publications. Consequently, GRSL expanded to six issues this year. At the beginning of the year, Prof. Jocelyn Chanussot started his tenure as the new Editor of J-STARS. Under his leadership, J-STARS has done extremely well. The submission rate for J-STARS has tripled in 2011. Consequently, J-STARS will expand to 6 issues per year in 2012.   The Editors of TGRS, Prof. Chris Ruf, and, GRSL, Prof. Paolo Gamba, have done an outstanding job during the last three years and were recently reappointed by the GRSS AdCom to serve as Editors for 2012-2013. The GRSS appreciates all the hard work of the journal Editors, the Associate Editors and reviewers. These volunteers ensure that the publications are of the highest quality. This year the IEEE TAB approved a new publication award, the IEEE GRSS Highest Impact Paper Award, which will be awarded in the future to papers that were published in the GRSS journals with the highest impact.

Over 1400 delegates attended the excellent IGARSS 2011 in Vancouver, Canada. The number of attendees was outstanding, especially considering that conference had to be moved only four months prior to its opening. In addition, this year, GRSS continued to sponsor or co-sponsor many specialty symposia all over the world in order to promote remote sensing and GRSS activities. Among these specialty symposia were JURSE 2011 held in Munich, Germany in April, the Atmospheric Transmission Models meeting held in Lexington, MA in June, WHISPERS 2011 held in Lisbon, Portugal in June and Multitemp 2011 held in Trento, Italy in July. All these meetings were of high quality and it was a personal pleasure for me to attend and address the audiences at JURSE 2011 and WHISPERS 2011 on behalf of the GRSS.

The GRSS AdCom continues to work hard to promote GRSS activities in Africa, Asia and Latin America under the umbrella of the GRSS Globalization Inititave led by GRSS Past President, Prof. Tony Milne. The task of the Globalization Inititaive is to reach out to the international communities where GRSS has not been sufficiently visible. This year, the major focus has been on Asia. In September, the GRSS was involved in the 2011 Asian Conference on Remote Sensing in Taipei, Taiwan, where a GRSS workshop on Forest Monitoring, Carbon, and REDD+, beyond Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, was conducted. GRSS presenters included Prof. Tony Milne, Dr. David G. Goodenough and Dr. Anthea Mitchell. The workshop was attended by 55 delegates. Similar GRSS workshops will be held in other areas of the world in the future.

Under the leadership of Chapter Chair, Prof. Kun-Shan Chen, the GRSS AdCom is focused on establishing local GRSS Chapters in order to strengthen GRSS activities and promote a continued and sustained GRSS impact. Several new GRSS Chapters were formed in 2010, including chapters in Saudi Arabia, Croatia and Alaska. Additional GRSS Chapters are being established, for example in India.

Best wishes for a happy holiday season and a wonderful 2012 to you and your families.

Jon Atli Benediktsson
President
IEEE GRSS
benedikt@hi.is

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