Abstract

THERMAL REMOTE SENSING: ART AND/OR SCIENCE?
Track: Education
Authors: Seyed Kazem Alavipanah, Saeed Goudarzi

The color is an indicator of heat and heat is an indicator of intelligence. Any movement shows the heat existence and subsequently, light existence, that all of them are the primary concepts of remote sensing, especially thermal infrared remote sensing. The process of visual photo or satellite image interpretation brings not only scientific knowledge but all of the background that interpreter has obtained through a lifetime. The synergism of integrating scientific knowledge with real world analyst experience permits the interpreter to develop heuristic rules of thumbs to extract useful information from the imagery. An image analyst should not interpret a thermal infrared image as if it were an aerial photograph or a typical image. Rather, the analyst must understand radiation of short wavelength energy, longer wavelength energy and their interaction, but also the analyst must think thermally to study the role of art in thermal remote sensing interpretation, therefore five study areas in Iran were selected. Landsat thermal and reflective imagery of these five areas in desert were interpreted based on visual and digital methods. Based on results obtained from visual image analysis, we concluded that some image analyst are better than other image analyst, due to the following reasons: 1) they can synthesize science rules and real word experiences to rich logical and correct conclusions, 2) understand the scientific rules better 3) have seen many landscape geographic areas, and 4) understand thermal properties of materials. Thus we may conclude that thermal remote sensing is both art and science.