Promotional Information

The insights that remote sensing and GIS can provide to ecologists offer an amazing opportunity to advance research, but the learning curve to use such tools can be steep. This book helps the reader wade through what could feel like an overwhelming amount of information to practically apply remote sensing and GIS to ecological questions. Importantly, this book enables the reader to learn a high-level concept and become familiar with the overall language used in the discipline, and then zoom in to the nuts and bolts of how to actually execute an analysis. Consequently, the book will be a valuable resource to ecological researchers, particularly because of the focus on open source software. -- Allison Leidner, Universities Space Research Association/NASA Earth Science Division This massive guidebook provides an impressive integration of theoretical concepts of remote sensing, GIS and spatial analysis with practical approaches using a number of field examples, available as free datasets for people to practice on, using open source software throughout for maximum accessibility. From how to begin with spatial data sampling, all the way through to the final creation of publishable maps and graphics, the book is an invaluable one-stop resource for ecologists, who are now increasingly utilising the power of spatial datasets for research, conservation practice and policy. -- Harini Nagendra, Professor of Sustainability, Azim Premji University, Bangalore India

Table of Contents

Introduction
1 Spatial Data and Software
2 Introduction to Remote Sensing and GIS
3 Where to Obtain Spatial Data?
4 Spatial Data Analysis for Ecologists: First Steps
5 Pre-Processing Remote Sensing Data
6 Field Data for Remote Sensing Data Analysis
7 From Spectral to Ecological Information
8 Land Cover or Image Classification Approaches
9 Land Cover Change or Change Detection
10 Continuous Land Cover Information
11 Time Series Analysis
12 Spatial Land Cover Pattern Analysis
13 Modelling Species Distributions
14 Introduction to the added value of Animal Movement Analysis and Remote Sensing
Outlook and Acknowledgements
Index

About the Author

Martin Wegmann has a PhD in remote sensing focusing on time-series analysis on land cover change and fragmentation in Africa. He is an assistant professor at the Global Change Ecology Msc program at the University of Wurzburg, Germany and runs courses in remote sensing analysis for biodiversity and conservation. Benjamin Leutner is a research assistant at the department of remote sensing at the University of Wurzburg. He has extensive experience in geo-spatial analysis of remote sensing data using Open Source software. Stefan Dech is director of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) since 1998, and current spokesman of the Earth Observation Center (EOC) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Since 2001 he has held the Chair for Remote Sensing at the Institute of Geography and Geology of the University of Wurzburg.

Reviews

Remote Sensing and GIS for Ecologists could become an essential undergraduate-level textbook, but it is also a guide to practising ecologists who want to broaden their toolkit.
*Conservation Biology*

We recommend this book not only as an interesting and informative guide to remote sensing concepts, but also as a vehicle to quickly delve into hands-on processing and analysis of remote sensing data to answer many questions relevant to landscape ecologists.
*Landscape Ecology*