IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2013 - 3

from the editor
by Lorenzo Bruzzone

Dear Reader,

t is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the first
issue of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine (GRSM)! As announced in recent months, the IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) established this new magazine, which was approved by the
IEEE Technical Activities Board in 2012. This is an important achievement for GRSS, which has never before published a magazine. This magazine, which is intended for
everyone interested in geoscience, remote sensing and
related topics, provides a new venue to publish high
quality technical articles that by their very nature do not
find a home in journals requiring scientific innovation.
The goal of the magazine is to publish tutorial and technical papers on geoscience and remote sensing topics, as
well as papers that describe relevant projects based on
and applications of topics addressed by our society. All
tutorial and technical papers will undergo blind review
by multiple reviewers. The review process is managed
on the IEEE Manuscript Central site, as is already done
for the three GRSS journals. In addition, the magazine
will publish regular columns on education in remote
sensing, remote sensing missions, standard data sets,
women in geoscience and remote sensing, space agency
news, book reviews, etc. Some of these columns are already published in this inaugural issue, and others will
be introduced in subsequent issues. As you can see, the
new magazine has been formatted to have an appealing
layout, and its articles will be included in the IEEE Xplore
online archive. The first issue is provided to all GRSS
members in both printed and digital versions. Beginning with the second issue, taking into account current
trends in new IEEE publications, only the digital version
will be published and provided complimentary for all

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2013.2244279
Date of publication: 17 April 2013

MARCH 2013

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

GRSS members. I would like to take this opportunity to
encourage you to prepare and submit articles and technical content to be published in the GRSM.
This first issue includes two Features articles. The first
is an excellent tutorial paper on synthetic aperture radar
(SAR), which is one of the most important technologies
in active remote sensing. This contribution is a tutorial
review on SAR principles and theory, followed by an
overview of established techniques such as polarimetry,
interferometry and differential interferometry as well
as of emerging techniques (e.g., polarimetric SAR interferometry, tomography and holographic tomography).
For each technique, a number of application examples
are provided, including associated parameter inversion
modeling. The paper also describes innovative technologies and concepts. The second paper of this section
describes a new database and its associated website,
called IMAGESEER (IMAGEs for Science, Education,
Experimentation and Research), which was developed
to enable those who are not remote sensing researchers
to search and explore NASA Earth and space images.
The "Technical Committees" column, after a brief
introduction to its goals, describes the activities of
the GRSS Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing
(FARS) Technical Committee. The article gives the
scope of the committee, along with an overview of
current and planned activities.
The "Organization Profiles" column describes the
Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT)
project (managed by the NASA/Marshall Space Flight
Center Earth Science Office at the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville,
Alabama, USA). The article introduces the project and
describes related activities and future plans.
(continued on page 61)

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2013