Over recent decades, intense human activities, including urban expansion, industrial emissions, farming, deforestation, mining, tourism, and land reclamation, have significantly transformed the natural environment. These changes give rise to environmental challenges like arable land degradation, deforestation, air and water pollution. Effective environmental protection and governance are crucial, particularly in environmentally vulnerable areas like farming-pastoral transitional zones, wetlands, arid regions, coastlines, and alpine-cold regions. Remote sensing proves invaluable in assessing environmental parameters and monitoring regional or global environmental changes over long-term history. Geospatial methods, grounded in remotely sensed images and other datasets, help analyze the compounded effects of multiple factors influenced by human activities. This reprint focuses on new theories, datasets, methods, findings, and applications to address essential questions about environmental changes. It explores how to monitor changes resulting from human activities, quantify their environmental impact, and assess the combined influence of natural disturbances and human alterations. The goal is to uncover patterns and mechanisms of environmental evolution, fostering knowledge exchange and innovative research for effective environmental protection and governance.

People and the Environment: Approaches for Linking Household and Community Surveys to Remote Sensing and GIS appeals to a wide range of natural, social, and spatial scientists with interests in conducting population and environment research and thereby characterizing (a) land use and land cover dynamics through remote sensing, (b) demographic and socio-economic variables through household and community surveys, and (c) local site and situation through resource endowments, geographical accessibility, and connections of people to place through GIS. Case studies are used to examine theories and practices useful in linking people and the environment. We also describe land use and land cover dynamics and the associated social, biophysical, and geographical drivers of change articulated through human-environment interactions. People and the Environment: Approaches for Linking Household and Community Surveys to Remote Sensing and GIS addresses a need for a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of linking across thematic domains (e.g., social, biophysical, and geographical) and across space and time scales for research and study within the context of human-environment interactions. The human dimensions research community, LULCC program, and human and landscape ecology communities are collectively viewing the landscape within a spatially-explicit perspective, where people are viewed as agents of landscape change that shape and are shaped by the landscape, and where landscape form and function are assessed within a space-time context. Current researchers and those following this early group of integrative scientists face challenges in conducting this type of research, but the potential rewards for insight are substantial.

Space-based sensors are giving us an ever-closer and more comprehensive look at the earth's surface; they also have the potential to tell us about human activity. This volume examines the possibilities for using remote sensing technology to improve understanding of social processes and human-environment interactions. Examples include deforestation and regrowth in Brazil, population-environment interactions in Thailand, ancient and modern rural development in Guatemala, and urbanization in the United States, as well as early warnings of famine and disease outbreaks. The book also provides information on current sources of remotely sensed data and metadata and discusses what is involved in establishing effective collaborative efforts between scientists working with remote sensing technology and those working on social and environmental issues.

Geosphere-biosphere interaction of certain elements and compounds is a major factor in global environmental change. This guide to the role of geographical monitoring in ecosystem modelling contains papers presented at the International Geographical Union Seminar on monitoring geosystems.

This book focuses on a range of geospatial applications for environmental health research, including environmental justice issues, environmental health disparities, air and water contamination, and infectious diseases. Environmental health research is at an exciting point in its use of geotechnologies, and many researchers are working on innovative approaches. This book is a timely scholarly contribution in updating the key concepts and applications of using GIS and other geospatial methods for environmental health research. Each chapter contains original research which utilizes a geotechnical tool (Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, GPS, etc.) to address an environmental health problem. The book is divided into three sections organized around the following themes: issues in GIS and environmental health research; using GIS to assess environmental health impacts; and geospatial methods for environmental health. Representing diverse case studies and geospatial methods, the book is likely to be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students across the geographic and environmental health sciences. The authors are leading researchers and practitioners in the field of GIS and environmental health.

This contributed volume presents relevant examples of socio-environmental research that highlight the challenges and opportunities of using geotechnologies in interdisciplinary settings across the vast, culturally, and environmentally mega-diverse region known as Latin America. While remote sensing has been mostly used for mapping and monitoring physical features, geographic information systems open up opportunities for the integration of socio-economic and environmental data collected through individual and community-based surveys, in-situ measurements, and other participatory research techniques to offer additional analytically grounded power when evaluating socio-environmental processes that shape Latin American landscapes. The topics addressed in this book include deforestation and land degradation, borderlands dynamics, agriculture and agroecological systems, environmental conservation and development, public health, tourism, environmental justice, archeology, volunteered geography and urban planning, among others. The book is intended for academics, graduate and undergraduate classrooms, and general audiences with interest in Latin America and the socio-environmental issues that threaten the sustainability of the region and local communities. The book will also appeal to practitioners, managers, and policy makers interested in the application of geo-technologies and field-based research to address complex socio-environmental problems in the Global South.