Foreword Remote Sensing for Environmental Sustainability in the Asian–Pacific Region.

The papers in this special section examine the use of remote sensing technology to promote environmental sustainability in Asia-Pacific regions. Worldwide urbanization and deforestation are the two main interconnected ways that human activities are continually changing and reshaping the earth's surface. How earth observation and remote sensing technologies can contribute to improve the knowledge of the productivity and sustainability of natural and human ecosystems is an important theme in the global change community. In China, for instance, rapid economic growth and urbanization over the past three decades have resulted in dramatic changes in land use and land cover and have led to severe environmental consequences, which have made China's sustainable development a grand challenge. In the meantime, during the past few decades, environmental changes in the Asian–Pacific region have posed significant challenges to the scientific community. Therefore, the global problem of how earth observation and remote sensing technologies may be applied to assessing, monitoring, modeling, and simulating ecosystems, environments, and resources at various spatial and temporal scales translates into peculiar and very urgent questions and applications in this colossal and dynamic geographical region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]