IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2013 - 3

from the editor
by Lorenzo bruzzone

his third issue of the new IEEE Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Magazine has been published shortly after
the recent premier international remote sensing conference, IGARSS 2013 in Melbourne, Australia.
One important news item regarding the magazine is that the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Administrative Committee decided during their July
2013 meeting to distribute both digital and electronic
versions of the magazine to all GRSS members free
of charge during 2013 and 2014. This will allow all
GRSS members to access the magazine's contents
and to become familiar with the digital format of the
magazine. The digital format is different from the
electronic format, which is used by the IEEE Xplore
web site. The digital format allows readers to navigate
and explore the technical content of the magazine
with a look and feel similar to that of an issue of a
printed magazine. The electronic version provided on
the IEEE Xplore web site does not have a magazine layout and only allows readers to access each article as a
separate pdf file.
Another important news item on the magazine is
that Manuscript Central, the online submission and
review web site, is open to accept article submissions. I
would like to remind you that 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 the GRS Society. All tutorial and
technical papers will undergo blind review by multiple
reviewers. In addition, the magazine publishes 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. Please refer to the call for papers in this issue for
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2013.2277529
Date of publication: 1 October 2013

September 2013

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

more details on the topics of the magazine and on the
procedure for submitting your contributions to the magazine. I would like to encourage everyone to prepare and
submit articles and technical content for review to be
published in the Magazine.
This issue includes an excellent Feature article,
which is a tutorial paper on despeckling methods for
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images prepared by
well-known and highly respected scientists in the field
from Italy. The paper provides a critical review of the
main despeckling techniques
presented in the literature since
their initial use over 30 years GRSM digital and elecago, highlighting trends and
tronic versions will be
changes in the approaches to
distributed free of
despeckling over years. Various fundamental and advanced charge to all grss members in 2013 and 2014.
concepts are presented with
examples and critical discussion, thereby providing an
updated and comprehensive overview of this topic.
Moreover, future potential methods based on new
concepts of signal processing, including compressive
sensing, are discussed.
The Technical Committees column contains an article
announcing the results of the 2013 IEEE GRSS Data
Fusion Contest organized by the Data Fusion Technical
Committee. After a brief overview of previous contests,
the details of this year's event are reported, including the
outcome of the contest.
The Women in Geoscience and Remote Sensing presents
a short article written by Prof. Florence Tupin, ParisTech,
France. She is an international leader in image processing in remote sensing and provides an example of a very
successful career.
The Chapters section contains an article that introduces the recently established GRSS Turkey Chapter.
The article briefly describes the current activities of the
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2013