| Summary: | Many countries face multiple challenges arising from rapid degradation of critical natural resources, and many other environmental constraints. Unsustainable increase in the pressure on available resources owing to a rapidly burgeoning human population. Since the launch of the first Meteorological Satellite in 1960, satellite remote sensing has emerged to be a cost-effective method for conducting time-series, large-scale observations of the Earth's systems. Satellite images can be used to map the entire world and to generate a number of global datasets needed for various thematic applications. This publication directly addresses these issues by focus- ing on a number of “hot spots” (i.e., locations that have undergone very rapid environmental change) by using state-of-the-art remote sensing and spatial data integration techniques to analyze and document these changes over a 30-year period (1972–2001). The hotspots cover major and diverse themes across the world, ranging from forest cover change in Rondonia (South America), urban sprawl in Las Vegas (North America), drying of Lake Chad (Africa), demise of wetlands in Mesopotamia (West Asia), emerging urban growth centers in Asia, to the ice shelf collapse in Polar regions.
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