IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2016 - 3

from the editor
by Lorenzo Bruzzone

Closing 2016 with IEEE Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Magazine

his is the last issue in 2016 of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine (GRSM). During this year, the
magazine has continued to grow, and it has obtained the very
important achievement of being included in the Thomson
Reuters array of products and services. All issues, beginning
with the first in 2013, are indexed and abstracted in the following Thomson Reuters products: Science Citation Index
Expanded; Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition; Current
Contents/Physical, Chemical, and Earth Sciences; and Current Contents/Engineering, Computing, and Technology.
In addition, another piece of important news for 2016 is
that the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), taking into account
the numerous requests received from IEEE GRSS members, decided to offer in its publication portfolio an option
for members to receive print copies of GRSM in 2017 for
the symbolic total cost of US$3 (US$2 if you are a student
member). This is a great opportunity for all GRSS members! The Qmags digital version and the electronic version
published in IEEE Xplore will continue to be offered to all
members for free.
In 2016, we published two special issues and two regular issues, thus alternating thematic collections of peerreviewed articles with more traditional issues. I expect this
trend will continue and that GRSM will have many other
special issues in the future containing tutorial/review articles on specific thematic areas. I encourage you to contact
me if you are interested in proposing a special issue.
This issue includes four feature articles, the first of which
provides an overview of the development of data fusion in
the field of remote sensing, considering fusion in terms of
data fusion, sensor fusion, and information fusion. The second feature article addresses NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land
Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission, which is scheduled to be launched no later than April 2018. The article
describes the application program related to the ICESat-2
mission and presents four case studies related to sea-ice
forecasting for maritime decision making, ecosystem moniDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2016.2620818
Date of publication: 16 December 2016

December 2016

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

toring in semiarid regions, water-level tracking for lakes and
reservoirs, and volcanic and geohazard identification. The
third article addresses the problem of water-surface backscattering and wind measurements by airborne weather radar, presenting a short review of the field and the methods
for measuring water-surface backscattering signatures and
for estimating near-surface wind vectors over water. The
fourth article presents a study aimed at identifying possible
correlations between the position of the moon and the occurrence of earthquakes. This has been done using the data
related to a set of 229 California earthquakes occurring between 1769 and 2004.
Also in this issue, the "Technical Committees" column
describes recent activities in the framework of Earth data science developed by the IEEE GRSS Earth Science Informatics Technical Committee. The "Chapters" column presents
two contributions. The first article describes the activities
of the Southeastern Michigan Chapter of GRSS, which has
served its members since 1985. The second item illustrates
the recent activities of the GRSS Alaska Chapter, which was
founded in 2011 with the goal of improving the coordination of remote sensing-related activities across the state to
respond to its varying environmental challenges. The "Distinguished Lecturer Program" column describes the program that provides GRSS Chapters with seminars by experts
on topics of interest and importance to the geoscience and
remote sensing community. The article also includes the
current portfolio of GRSS Distinguished Speakers.
Finally, the "Conference Reports" column contains three
articles, two of which are related to some of the activities
at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Symposium (IGARSS) 2016, held in Beijing, China, on 10-
15 July 2016. The articles focus on the Major Awards and the
GRSS Publication Awards, respectively, presented at IGARSS
2016 and include information on all of the award recipients.
Congratulations to all of them! The third article refers to the
14th Specialist Meeting on Microwave Radiometry and Remote Sensing of the Environment, held on the Aalto University campus, Espoo, Finland, on 11-14 April 2016.
I wish you a happy 2017!
GRS

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2016