International collaboration: the cornerstone of satellite land remote sensing in the 21st century

摘要

Satellite land remotely sensed data are used by scientists and resource managers world-wide to study similar multidisciplinary earth science problems. Most of their information requirements can be met by a small number of satellite sensor types. Moderate resolution resource satellites and low-resolution environmental satellites are the most prominent of these, and they are the focus of this paper. Building, launching, and operating satellite systems are very expensive endeavors.