PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
December 2016
917
BOOK
REVIEW
Remote Sensing of Wetlands
Applications and Advances
Ralph W. Tiner, Megan W. Lang, and Victor V.
Klemas, Editors
CRC Press Taylor and Francis Group – Boca Raton, London,
New York 2015, xvii and 555 pp., black and white and color
illustrations, tables, photos, images, maps, index. ISBN-13 978-1-
4822-3735-1 (Hardback), Hardcover $xx.xx
Reviewed by
Demetrio P. Zourarakis, PhD, GISP, CMS-
RS, CMS-GIS/LIS, GIS and Remote Sensing Analyst,
Kentucky Division of Geographic Information
At almost 600 pages long and 3 ½ pounds in weight, this
hefty and ponderous volume presents the reader with an
in-depth exposition encompassing state-of-the-art remote
sensing techniques and methods as applied to the art and
science of wetland mapping. The book is authoritative and
scholarly, and also a pleasure to read, particularly because of
the central topic: wetlands - extremely valuable, often fragile
and complex, natural and man-made systems. Throughout the
book we are reminded that wetlands notoriously challenge
the accuracy of mapping efforts carried out by using either
proximal sensing (e.g. wet feet on the ground) or remote
sensing from the air or from space. Frequently, the structural
and functional complexity of wetlands translates into spatial
and spectral complexity. Paraphrasing what the author of
Chapter Three wrote, the harder a wetland is to identify and
map on the ground, the harder becomes to identify and map it
using remote sensing.
Through their collaborative work, the authors of this
volume successfully provide extensive proof that the detection,
identification, delineation and surveying, classification,
mapping and monitoring of wetlands are each fraught
with difficulties, which span the continuum of information
acquisition and exploitation extending from the field on up
to remote sensing platforms and sensors. Despite its sharp
technological edge – which necessarily imparts a perishable
nature to some of the information it contains, this book is a
highly valuable and durable reference for any reader who
wants to acquire foundational and state-of-the-practice
information, at a general or detailed level on the use of remote
sensing technologies, techniques and methods as applied to
wetland mapping.
This volume is the result of a successfully applied utilitarian
design approach. The information presented is useful to and
useable by readers at many different levels, and who may be
working with a wide diversity of interests. The assembled
corpus is organized in a way that leads the reader from the
foundations and fundamentals of wetland science to an analysis
of successful applications of remote sensing using case studies.
The editors – also authors themselves – have selected a vast
group of fifty-six credentialed scholars who provide clear and
precise writing styles without sacrificing depth of content.
The book contains a table of acronyms, and is profusely
illustrated with figures – images and maps and supported with
tables throughout its entirety, making the text quite readable.
Illustrative materials occur on average on about every other
page and only rarely sections are too long and without figures
or tables. As chapters progress, the contributing authors
collectively amass an impressive amount of references
supporting their chapters, and in some cases materials for
further reading are pointed out. The volume has been carefully
written and thoroughly edited and it flows virtually free from
typographic or grammatical errors.
The twenty-five chapters are arranged in four sections,
each providing increasing level of detail as the application
and applicability of remote sensing to the study and mapping
of wetlands is revisited as a recurring theme. Section One –
“IntroductiontotheUseofRemoteSensingforWetlandmapping”
contains the first five chapters; the first three chapters address
the many challenges posed by this ecosystem of definitions,
classification (e.g. Ramsar Convention International Wetland
Classification System) and inventorying systems (e.g.
Canadian Wetland Inventory, National Wetlands Inventory)
and the mapping constraints and challenges they give rise to.
These issues reappear in later chapters as they are central to
the issue of mapping accuracy. Chapter Four deals with the
early applications of remote sensing to wetland mapping and
is of great historic value. Chapter Five presents the reader
with a compilation of remote sensing techniques and types of
sensors and sensor data which exhibit usefulness in the study
continued on page 921
