This text aims to offer information on research approaches to assessing global environment changes. It includes suggestions for the exchange of ideas between those studying land surface and remote sensing specialists, and advocates synthesizing the findings of different disciplines.

Since the publishing of the first edition of Classification Methods for Remotely Sensed Data in 2001, the field of pattern recognition has expanded in many new directions that make use of new technologies to capture data and more powerful computers to mine and process it. What seemed visionary but a decade ago is now being put to use and refined in