Introduction to Part I

Abstract

Remote sensing technology helps one to view the characteristics of the earth from space, and there are many ways to distinguish the information obtained on land, vegetation, water, etc. from satellite data. Knowledge generated by traditional approaches, remote sensing, and geographical positioning system (GPS) techniques could be used successfully to produce geographic information system (GIS) databases, to perform a range of geographical analyses for sustainable land resource management, and to generate environmentally responsible action plans. Digital terrain modeling, geomorphological mapping, inventory and mapping of soil resources, soil-landscape modeling, land use/land cover mapping, cropland mapping and monitoring, drought surveillance and evaluation, soil erosion evaluation, land erosion mapping and evaluation, water resource management, water conservation, and agriculture management are some of the geospatial technological innovations. The cost of such data and GIS applications, however, is an obstacle to their use by the wider population, especially in developing countries. Open data and applications are being encouraged to maximize the science and social advantages of spatial data. Rapid advances have been found in the development of free open source software (FOSS) in the field of geospatial science in order to examine satellite data of widely varying characteristics and other spatial and non-spatial data from various sources. The existence of open spatial (Raster and vector) data and open source GIS applications is discussed in this chapter.