Remote sensing of agro-environmental change

Earth observation (EO) through remote sensing (RS) technologies and methods is nowadays a fundamental disciplinary field to analyze and monitor the status and changes of agroecosystems and environmental processes. EO approaches at multiple scale have become part of daily work for scientist, land managers and professional addressing global and regional challenges, and a fundamental instrument to inform international environmental policies.



This class aims at introducing the main principles and methods of RS and the use of the information collected from sensor on board of Earth-observing satellites and other platforms (airplanes, drones, ground) to study agro-environmental processes. The class conveys current RS applications for addressing global/regional challenges (e.g., food security, biodiversity conservation, climate change, sustainable farming) with selected case studies from ongoing research or implementation projects. Students will be guided in gaining practical skills to handle remote sensing data and develop processing flows and will be encouraged in acquiring analytical and critical thinking competences on how to address complex environmental challenges using EO approaches and data products.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

- Illustrate the basics of RS principles, methods, processing workflow and applications
- Use tools for finding, visualizing, pre-processing and analyzing RS imagery
- Critically evaluate and compare different EO operational products and applications/services
- Assess opportunities and trade-offs in EO environmental applications' design
- Articulate complexity and challenges in addressing global/regional environmental changes using RS technologies.