Introduction to remote sensing

 Definition
 Remote sensing is the technology or a process of obtaining information about different objects
via emitting an energy or radiation. We can acquire the data or information of Earth surface
without being in contact with it. Human eyes are the basic example of remote sensing but they
are only sensible to the visible part of electromagnetic spectrum and not the infrared, thermal or
any other spectra.

So we are going to see a diagram to understand the electromagnetic energy and its interaction
between the objects. Now that we want to know about interaction between objects and the
electromagnetic energy, we can see here that the arrow that is pointing towards the leaf that's
the electromagnetic energy coming from the sun and some of that electromagnetic energy is
absorbed by the leaf and as we know the leaves photosynthesize and it makes food by
absorbing the electromagnetic energy to the chlorophyll and it absorbs the blue light and also
it absorbs the red light and because of these light it is able to make food and therefore we
know that it reflects the green that's why we see the leaves green in color.

When we talk about the near infrared portion of the spectrum that we cannot see with our
naked eyes, but we will be able to see it with the remote sensed imagery and we will look at
that now.
 SPECTRAL PATTERN ANALYSIS
 It is used to analyze the type of spectral pattern a particular object exhibits this is called the
spectral pattern analysis. Basically a graph is seen below where we can see on the x-axis is
the wavelength of all the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we are interested in to
see and on y-axis is the percent reflectance and it could also be the percent transmittance or
the percent absorption because we are studying remote sensing so we are seeing what's going
on with the light that is getting reflected of the object because that's what is coming into our
eyes and that is what coming into the camera or we can say into the sensor.

 Let us take another example of spectral pattern analysis

 Here we have grass, soil and water as objects. Now if we want to distinguish between
let’s say grass and soil, at around 1.2 micrometers they are identical so that is not the
wavelength we would pick to differentiate both of them, so let’s say at 4 micrometers
grass reflectance is around 2% whereas soil reflectance is around 14%. Now we could
properly distinguish them. So this is why we use multiple wavelengths to be able to sense
different objects.