Twenty-first century remote sensing technologies are revolutionizing the study of tropical forests

摘要

The fields of tropical biology and conservation face significant transformations due to rapid technological developments in remote sensing. Other fields (e.g. Archeology) are experiencing this momentous change even more rapidly. In this article, we review some of the challenges that the fields of tropical biology and conservation face during the first quarter of the twenty-first century from the perspective of various remote sensing technologies, and discuss the transformations that they may bring to these disciplines. In addition, we review two emerging technologies driving paradigm changes in the nexus of ecology, remote sensing, and analytics: near-surface remote sensing and Wireless Sensor Networks. These two technologies, arising from the eScience paradigm, offer unique opportunities to integrate field observations at hyper-temporal and spatial resolutions that were not possible as recently as 5years ago.