Scientific Issues and Instrumental Opportunities in Remote Sensing and High Resolution Spectrometry

The effective use of remote sensing techniques requires a basic understanding of the fundamental processes that affect radiation during its transport between the source of light, the target of interest, and the detector. The principles of radiation emission and scattering in the optical domain are outlined, paying particular attention to the spatial, temporal, spectral, and directional sources of variability in the data. The problems of measuring and interpreting these observations are addressed, and the specifications of existing and planned space-borne instruments are discussed.