Sustainability

28Remote Sensing and GIS Applications in Sustainability

Manish Kumar Goyal¹, Ashutosh Sharma², and Rao Y. Surampalli³

¹Discipline of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, India

²Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India

³Global Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, Lenexa, KS, USA

28.1 Introduction

The overexploitation of available natural resources for fulfilling the increasing demand for food, fuel and fiber of the ceaselessly increasing population has resulted in severe environmental degradation. Rapid industrialization and infrastructure development along with deforestation and the release of an enormous pool of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in different parts of the world have resulted in increasing the GHG concentration in the earth's atmosphere causing global warming and climate change (IPCC 2007, 2014). It has become extremely important to cease the ongoing overexploitation of natural resources and focus on sustainability. Sustainable use of natural resources focuses on an optimal utilization of limited available natural resources such that it does not have any harmful impact on the environment and we leave enough natural resources for future generations to fulfill their needs (Brundtland 1987). It is all about maintaining a balance between conservation and production through recognition and monitoring of critical areas (Rao 2000). This chapter presents a brief introduction to remote sensing and ...