IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2016 - 3

from the editor
by Lorenzo Bruzzone

A Special Issue Before IGARSS 2016

elcome to the June 2016 issue of IEEE Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Magazine (GRSM), which was
published shortly before the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2016)
to be held on 10-15 July 2016 in Beijing, China. As usual, a rich and interesting technical program has been
prepared for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Society's (GRSS's) premier symposium.
This special issue of GRSM focuses on advances in
machine learning for remote sensing and geoscience,
which is a very important topic for our community,
where the use of machine-learning paradigms and
methods has gained much attention in the past decades. These techniques have been largely applied to
the solution of both classification problems (i.e., for
the production of thematic maps) and regression
problems (i.e., for the estimation of bio- or geophysical parameters) as well as to other specific remote
sensing data-analysis challenges. An overview of this
special issue and a brief description of the topics addressed by the five theme articles are given in the
"From the Guest Editors" column. I expect GRSM to
have many other special issues in the future containing tutorial and review articles on specific thematic areas. I encourage you to contact me if you are interested
in proposing a special issue.
Also in this issue, the "Technical Committees" column
presents a contribution that describes the International
Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy Technical Committee
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2016.2548598
Date of publication: 13 June 2016

JUNE 2016

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

Calibration and Validation Workshop that was held at the
National Environment Research Council Field Spectroscopy Facility of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in
October 2015.
The "Chapters" column contains two contributions.
The first article describes the activities of the Wuhan Section GRSS Chapter in China, and the second details the
Singapore Joint Aerospace and Electronic System Society
and GRSS Chapter.
The "Distinguished Lecturer
Program" column presents a short
This special issue
article that describes the program
of GRSM focuses on
that provides GRSS Chapters
advances in machine
with seminars by experts on topics of interest and importance to
learning for remoTe
the geoscience and remote senssensing and geoscience.
ing community. The article also
includes the current portfolio of
GRSS Distinguished Speakers.
The "Women in GRS" column presents the new Underrepresentation Program initiated in 2015 by the GRSS
Administrative Committee. This program addresses
gender and ethnic inclusion in the GRSS Professional
Activities Portfolio.
Finally, the "GRSS Member Highlights" column, among
other news, contains a brief article that points out the 2015
best reviewers of the GRSS journals. Congratulations to
all of them!
I wish you a relaxing and productive summer, and I
am looking forward to seeing many of you at IGARSS
2016 in Beijing.
GRS

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