IN FOCUS: The History of IEEE GRSS at 65: (1982-1985)

Under the Presidential leadership of Keith R. Carver (1982-3), Robert McIntosh (1984), and Calvin T. Swift (1985), GRSS developed many of the attributes that continue to define the Society today. The period coincided with major advances in Earth-observation technology worldwide, including new satellite missions, improvements in synthetic aperture radar, and the expansion of digital image analysis. As those technologies matured, GRSS increasingly became one of the principal forums through which engineers, physicists, Earth scientists, and remote-sensing specialists exchanged ideas and published research.

An Era of Growing Impact of Earth Observation

The launch of Landsat 4 in 1982 represented a particularly important milestone. Its Thematic Mapper instrument introduced substantially improved spatial and spectral resolution compared with earlier Landsat systems and quickly became a major subject of scientific analysis within the GRSS community.

At the same time, NASA’s Shuttle Imaging Radar missions continued to demonstrate the scientific potential of synthetic aperture radar for geological, hydrological, and environmental applications. SIR-A data, first collected during the 1981 Space Shuttle mission and analyzed extensively throughout the following years, attracted considerable attention because of radar’s ability to image terrain beneath dry desert sand and through cloud cover. The broader scientific environment reinforced the growing importance of Earth observation during this period. 

The focus on Earth observation became especially pertinent in 1985, when scientists from the British Antarctic Survey published their landmark findings documenting severe seasonal ozone depletion over Antarctica. The discovery immediately attracted worldwide scientific attention, and satellite observations from NASA’s Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) soon helped confirm and visualize the extent of the ozone hole on a planetary scale. The resulting imagery demonstrated to both scientists and the public that satellite Earth observation had become an essential tool for understanding global environmental change.

Journal Expansion and Impact

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING (TGRS) broadened significantly in both scope and technical depth during the early 1980s, reflecting the rapid expansion of remote sensing as a scientific discipline. Papers published during this period addressed microwave scattering, radar polarimetry, atmospheric propagation, oceanographic sensing, multispectral classification, electromagnetic modeling, and emerging digital image-processing techniques. The increasing diversity of the journal mirrored broader changes occurring throughout the remote sensing community. Research that had once been concentrated primarily within military and aerospace laboratories was now spreading rapidly into universities, civilian government agencies, and international research centers. 

Special issues, such as “Satellite Geodynamics” (July 1985), allowed the publication to dig deeper on specific topics of interest to members and the global community. This issue featured topics including “Satellite Geodynamics,” “Space-Age Geodesy: The NASA Crustal Dynamics Project,” “High-Frequency Variations in the Rotation of the Earth,” and “Earth Rotation and Polar Motion: Measurements and Implications.” 

The journal itself also expanded operationally during this period. Growing submission rates and increasing publication volume led to the transition of TGRS from quarterly to bimonthly publication in 1984. The expansion reflected both the increasing maturity of the Society and the accelerating pace of international remote sensing research. The expanded scope of work also reflected the increased dedication of many volunteers who worked to review articles and plan each publication.

IGARSS Becomes a Permanent International Institution

The International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) underwent equally important development between 1982 and 1985. Although GRSS-sponsored geoscience symposia had existed since the late 1960s, the early 1980s established IGARSS as the Society’s principal international conference as one of the leading annual meetings in the remote sensing field.

IGARSS ’82 in Munich represented a particularly significant milestone. Organized in cooperation with European institutions, the symposium demonstrated that GRSS could successfully conduct major international meetings outside North America while attracting broad participation from European laboratories and research organizations. The meeting reflected the increasingly global nature of remote sensing science and reinforced the Society’s ever expanding global role.

The success of the symposium in Munich also created momentum for future international events. “We came up with the idea of holding IGARSS in North America in odd-numbered years and overseas during even-numbered years,” explained Keith Carver (President 1982-3). “We knew that the Europeans were aware of the Remote Sensing Society, but so many of them at the time were in the Photogrammetry Society. But so many of the remote sensing and satellite programs both here and abroad were just getting started at the time.” 

Subsequent meetings followed this pattern through the next several years: IGARSS ’83 – San Francisco, CA, US, IGARSS’84 – Strasbourg, France, IGARSS’85 – Amherst, MA, US. By the middle of the decade, the symposium had evolved well beyond its origins as a specialized IEEE meeting. It had become a major interdisciplinary gathering that brought together global experts in radar systems, microwave engineering, image analysis, atmospheric science, oceanography, geology, and environmental monitoring.

Awards and Professional Identity

The early 1980s also marked the formal expansion of the Society’s awards and recognition programs. In 1981, the GRSS AdCom moved to revitalize its awards activities, an initiative led by Kiyo Tomiyasu, who proposed a series of awards that would recognize and encourage excellence in service to the Society, distinguished technical contributions, outstanding Transactions papers and exceptional IGARSS conference papers. He would serve as the Society’s first GRSS Awards Chairman. 

The Distinguished Achievement Award was established by the GRSS to recognize an individual “who has made significant technical contributions, usually over a sustained period. The first recipient (1981) was Professor Richard K. Moore, University of Kansas, US, who was recognized for “his significant technical contributions over a sustained period in the field of microwave remote sensing.”