8th ESA Advanced Training Course on Land Remote Sensing 2018

The European Space Agency (ESA) organised an Advanced Training Course on Land Remote Sensing dedicated to training the next generation of Earth Observation (EO) scientists to exploit data from EO missions (e.g. the Copernicus Sentinels) for science and applications development.

The course was part of ESA’s EO Science for Society – Scientific Exploitation element of EOEP-5 (the fifth cycle of ESA’s Earth Observation Envelope Programme).

Participation
Post graduate, PhD students, post-doctoral research scientists and users from European countries and Canada were invited to apply to the 5-day course which was held at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom during 10–14 September 2018. Research scientists and students from all other countries were also welcome to apply, subject to availability of spaces.

The official language of the training course was English. No participation fees were charged for the training.

Objectives:
The Advanced Training Course on Land Remote Sensing aimed at:

• Training the next generation of scientists on remote sensing of land surfaces and processes;
• Explaining the theoretical principles, processing algorithms, data products and their use in applications;
• Introducing tools and methods for the exploitation of EO satellite data, in particular the Sentinels;
• Stimulating and supporting the exploitation of ESA and non-ESA EO data for land remote sensing science and applications.

Contents:
The course provided advanced scientific knowledge on theory and applications of land remote sensing. It was organised around the following main components:

• Theoretical fundamentals and advanced concepts of spaceborne optical, thermal and microwave remote sensing
• Presentation of the Sentinel-1, -2 and -3 missions and relevant ESA Earth Explorer missions
• EO land applications: land use and land cover; change detection and multitemporal analysis; vegetation status and its disturbance; land surface temperature; terrain motion and critical infrastructure monitoring; forest biophysical retrievals; flood and water bodies monitoring; agricultural monitoring; fire detection; urban mapping; monitoring of the hydrological cycle, etc.
• Practicals using ESA toolboxes (e.g. SNAP) and other tools.

The training course included lectures by leading scientists as well as hands-on computer exercises exploiting real data for science and applications. The poster session organised during the course gave participants an opportunity to present their research results and consult with experts. Presenting a poster at the poster session was compulsory for all course participants.

Access here below the full programme and training material (both theory and practicals).