Conference Summary
32nd International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment
June 25-29, 2007, San José, Costa Rica

Grant Casady
PhD Candidate
Arid Lands Resource Sciences GIDP

The Herbert E. Carter Travel Award allowed me to attend the 32nd Annual International Symposium on Remote Sensing of the Environment (ISRSE), held in San Jose, Costa Rica. The conference provided an opportunity to present my own recent research, learn from the most recent advances presented in the research of others, and meet many of my colleagues in the field of remote sensing.

Plenary sessions focused on a recent consortium of remote sensing organizations referred to as GEOSS, or the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. This emerging project will allow organizations from around the world to share information on the earth system, so that as a society we can more easily monitor global changes, and design appropriate management and mitigation strategies to ensure a sustainable earth.

Technical sessions focused on a wide range of topics, however I focused mostly on sessions relating to terrestrial ecology, land cover change, and image analysis techniques. Some of the most interesting talks related to new advances in laser altimetry, hyperspectral analysis, and time series analysis. A number of recently developed tools were highlighted, including the use of Maximum Entropy modeling for the development of niche models that can be used with changing climate scenarios, methods of “boosting” classification trees in order to derive more accurate classifications of satellite images, and some clever techniques for merging temporal and spectral signatures of forest canopy species.

One valuable statistical technique was presented, in which the author proposed the use of a Horvitz-Thomas estimator to developed unbiased estimates of image classification accuracy assessments after having selected assessment samples using a stratified random sample. Current practices for remote sensing produced biased estimators due to differences in sample size.

In addition to the information obtained from the meeting I renewed contacts with a number of individuals that I had known from elsewhere, and made contacts with new colleagues that studied topics similar to what I am interested in. It became clear that continued participation in this meeting will be valuable.

Finally, the time in Costa Rica was excellent. I was able to get away for three half-day trips to the surrounding areas, and experienced first hand an ecosystem that was entirely new to me. The biodiversity of the cloud forests was truly amazing, and served as a reminder that our stewardship of the earth is as important as ever.