PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
June 2016
401
BOOK
REVIEW
Encyclopedia of Remote Sensing
Eni G. Njoku (ed.) Springer-Verlag
New York. 2014. XXV and 939 pp, illustrations and tables.
Hardcover. $ 499.00 ISBN 978-0-387-36698-2. eReference. $
499.00 ISBN 978-0-36699-9. Print + eReference. $ 629.00 ISBN
978-0-387-36700-2.
Reviewed by
Duane F. Marble, Emeritus Professor of
Geography, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
The purpose of this book is stated to be the provision to a wide
variety of users, including those new to the field, of a reference
tool (that is, one that is to be searched rather than read from
cover to cover) that will be of substantial assistance in their
exploration of the foundations, principles, and the state-of-the-
art of Earth remote- sensing. Physically, this printed volume
presents 170 individual articles that range in length from 17
pages to less than a third of a page in a volume of substantial size
(some 6 1/4 pounds in weight and about 8” by 11” x 2” in size).
The design of books intended to be major reference volumes
requires substantial advanced planning to provide a clear, work-
able definition of the proposed volume’s scope, as well as clearly
defining the necessary content and structural interrelationships
of the articles that are to constitute its content. The resulting
plan defines the many editorial activities needed to ensure the
effectiveness of a reference volume that must simultaneously span
the boundaries of its defined activity space while also meeting the
widely varied needs of its projected user community. Working at
such a high level of editorial complexity, while simultaneously
having to deal with substantial physical and temporal constraints,
is difficult and it is not at all surprising when, upon occasion, what
can be done comes to dominate what was originally envisioned.
The volume opens with a short Preface that provides the user
with very minimal guidance as to the complex structure under-
lying the book or what the user may expect to find within the
following 900+ pages. The usefulness of any reference volume
rests heavily upon the quality of the search tools it provides
to its users so that they may easily locate items of interest.
Missing from the volume’s opening is any overall Introduction
to the volume providing a basic orientation that would be highly
useful to users, particularly students or researchers who are
unfamiliar with remote-sensing. Commonly encountered explor-
atory tools in reference volumes are their Table of Contents and
Subject Index. Only these two tools, and no others of a more
sophisticated nature, are available within the present volume.
Examining the Table of Contents of the volume discloses a
strict alphabetical entry for all of the 170 individual articles. A
useful alternate would have been to arrange the article titles
so as to provide a useful structural view of the volume, such as
bringing together in a common section those articles dealing
with the utilization of remote-sensing. A general scanning of
the alphabetical titles of the articles reveals that little attention
was addressed to the creation of carefully generated, useful
titles for the 170 articles. There are some exceptions, such as a
number of clearly related articles whose titles all begin with the
term “Radiation.” In other cases, the assigned titles separate
related articles rather than bringing them together. Given the
editorial decisions made here, the structure of the volume’s
Table of Contents provides the user with a very weak tool for
identifying where specific items of interest may be found.
Within reference volumes of this type, another, usually quite
powerful, search engine is found in their Subject Index. The
Encyclopedia of Remote Sensing provides the user with 14 pages
of index terms arranged in three columns per page. Entries
in the Subject Index found here consist of a series of primary
terms arranged in alphabetical order that are augmented, at
times, by secondary terms pointing to specific areas of additional
detail within the primary term, if it is an article, or to other
locations within the volume where relevant components of the
term may be found.
Browsing the Subject Index in this volume leads to some
surprising results. For example, there is a primary entry under
“Ultraviolet” but none under “Infrared.” Perhaps, after 50 years of
remote-sensing development, there is now little or no work being
done that is focused upon this portion of the EMS? A student, or
a researcher from another discipline, might well assume this to
be the case! More random browsing reveals an unexpected major
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 82, No. 6, June 2016, pp. 401–402.
0099-1112/16/401–402
© 2016 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.82.6.401
