Abstract
Remote sensing of night lights differs from other sources of remote sensing in its ability to directly observe human activity from space as well as in informing us on a new type of anthropogenic threat, that of light pollution. This special issue focuses on studies which used newer sensors than the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program - Operational Line-Scan System (DMSP/OLS). Most of the analyses focused on data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) nighttime sensor (also called the Day/Night Band, or VIIRS/DNB in short), for which the first instrument in the series was launched in 2011. In this editorial, we provide an overview of the 12 papers published in this special issue, and offer suggestions for future research directions in this field, both with respect to the remote sensing platforms and algorithms, and with respect to the development of new applications.
Highlights
Remote sensing of night-time lights offers a unique ability to monitor human activity from space
Remote sensing of night lights differs from other sources of remote sensing in its ability to directly observe human activity from space as well as in informing us on a new type of anthropogenic threat, that of light pollution
Most of the analyses focused on data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) nighttime sensor, for which the first instrument in the series was launched in 2011
Summary
Remote sensing of night-time lights offers a unique ability to monitor human activity from space. Previous special issues devoted to remote sensing of night lights were published in the journal Remote Sensing in 2014 (Remote Sensing with Nighttime Lights, edited by Chris Elvidge, who is widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of remote sensing of night lights), and in 2017 (Recent Advances in Remote Sensing with Nighttime Lights, edited by Bailang Yu, Yuyu Zhou, Chunyang He and Xiaofeng Li, reflecting the immense use of night light imagery by Chinese scholars), as well as in the journal International Journal of Remote Sensing in 2017 (see cover paper of [8]) Both of these special issues covered studies using both DMSP/OLS and other sensors. We especially aimed for studies examining the potential of new sensors (such as Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS/DNB), and other emerging new sensors) to quantify night-time brightness at fine spatial and temporal resolutions, the generation of products from the VIIRS/DNB sensor (e.g., stable lights, gas flares, wildfires, etc.), the correction of atmospheric and lunar effects on the measured signal, and the correspondence between ground observations of artificial lights and light pollution and space borne measurements of night time brightness
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