The front cover shows a topographic image derived from airborne lidar data, two days after the massive Oso landslide (March 2014, in Washington State). With more than forty deaths and nearly fifty homes destroyed, this event ranks among the deadliest landslides in U.S. history, Lidar (light detection and ranging; Chapter 6) is an active remote sensing technique that involves transmitting pulses of laser light toward the ground and measuring the elapsed lime of pulse returns. The laser's rapid pulse rate yields a dense cloud of points that can be analyzed to extract the shape of the ground surfaces, as well as trees, structures, and other objects. Analysis of lidar images from before and after the event shows that the landslide covered an area of approximately 120 hectares (300 acres) and that about four million cubic meters (5.2 mil Hon; cubic yards) of material moved downslope. Chapter 8, Section 8.14 (Natural Disaster Assessment) provides additional imagery and discussion of the Oso landslide.

Concepts and foundations of remote sensing -- Elements of photographic systems -- Basic principles of photogrammetry -- Multispectral, thermal, and hyperspectral sensing -- Earth resource satellites operating in the optical spectrum -- Microwave and lidar sensing -- Digital image analysis -- Applications of remote sensing.