Remote Sensing of Soils: Mapping, Monitoring and Measurement covers the basic, theoretical and scientific concepts of multidisciplinary subjects, including sections that relate to soil sciences, remote sensing, geoinformatics, geomatics, civil and water resource engineering, geography, agriculture, disaster management and the earth and environmental sciences. The book consists of defined elements to help guide the reader, including an abstract, introductions, a literature review, methodology, results and discussions, findings, recommendations and conclusions. Each chapter includes theoretical information that is illustrated with flow charts, tables, figures, diagrams and other related illustrations. Site-specific research and case studies are described throughout with geographical and demographical data, current scientific issues, impacts, solutions and societal benefits, thus providing readers from multi-disciplinary backgrounds the tools they need to successful map, analyze and monitor soils. - Covers multispectral, hyperspectral and SAR remote sensing analysis of soil properties, soil moisture, soil salinity, and soil organic matters, etc., in spatio-temporal scale - Includes a section on digital soil mapping, including integrated RS, GIS and insitu surveyed data analysis for digital soil mapping using widely accepted models and approaches - Ideal for readers in the soil sciences, remote sensing, geoinformatics, geomatics, civil and water resource engineering, geography, agriculture, disaster management, and earth and environmental sciences

Digital Soil Mapping is the creation and the population of a geographically referenced soil database. It is generated at a given resolution by using field and laboratory observation methods coupled with environmental data through quantitative relationships. Digital soil mapping is advancing on different fronts at different rates all across the world. This book presents the state-of-the art and explores strategies for bridging research, production, and environmental application of digital soil mapping.It includes examples from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The chapters address the following topics: - evaluating and using legacy soil data - exploring new environmental covariates and sampling schemes - using integrated sensors to infer soil properties or status - innovative inference systems predicting soil classes, properties, and estimating their uncertainties - using digital soil mapping and techniques for soil assessment and environmental application - protocol and capacity building for making digital soil mapping operational around the globe.

Although the development of remote sensing techniques focuses greatly on construction of new sensors with higher spatial and spectral resolution, it is advisable to also use data of older sensors (especially, the LANDSAT-mission) when the historical mapping of land use/land cover and monitoring of their dynamics are needed. Using data from LANDSAT missions as well as from Terra (ASTER) Sensors, the authors shows in his book maps of historical land cover changes with a focus on agricultural irrigation projects. The kernel of this study was whether, how and to what extent applying the various remotely sensed data that were used here, would be an effective approach to classify the historical and current land use/land cover, to monitor the dynamics of land use/land cover during the last four decades, to map the development of the irrigation areas, and to classify the major strategic winter- and summer-irrigated agricultural crops in the study area of the Euphrates River Basin.