Surveys in Geophysics | 2019
Guest Editorial: International Space Science Institute (ISSI) Workshop on Space-Borne Imaging Spectroscopy for Exploring the Earth’s Ecosystems
Abstract
Earth’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are undergoing accelerated changes as a conse‐ quence of climate change, inadequate land use and many other processes, including feed‐ back mechanisms. In the coming decades, the world’s increasing population and living standards will prompt a further increase in our demand for global food and water resources. Likewise, the increasing demand of the world’s growing economies for resources such as energy, raw materials, water and land will remain a major driver of global change and envi‐ ronmental degradation. Furthermore, extreme weather conditions, hazards and pollution endanger human health, property and the environment. Our ability to address these increas‐ ingly urgent challenges very much depends on the improved detection, quantification and understanding of the relevant processes. A solid scientific foundation is required for informed decision making aimed at sustainable resources management. During recent decades, imaging spectroscopy has proven to be a valuable source of information for quantifying and modelling Earth surface processes (Goetz et al. 1985; Green et al. 1998; Schaepman et al. 2009). As opposed to multispectral imaging sys‐ tems, imaging spectrometers with narrow and contiguous spectral bands provide quan‐ titative ‘fingerprints’ of those materials having diagnostic absorption features which can be observed by means of dispersive (prism or diffraction grating) optical systems. Since the 1980s, airborne imaging spectrometers such as AVIRIS (Vane et al. 1993), APEX (Schaepman et al. 2015) and others have been shown to provide accurate and quantitative information for many application fields. These range from mineral explo‐ ration, soil mapping, vegetation monitoring, mapping of pollution and hazardous