This second edition focuses on Tropical Dry Forests (TDF) in the Americas and provides a comprehensive overview of new studies conducted in the last decade, giving new insights into the most endangered ecosystem in the tropics. Written by experts in remote sensing, ecosystem services, and ecology, the book concentrates on four thematic areas such as LiDAR remote sensing, remote sensing and ecology, quantification of ecosystem services, and TDF ecology. The case studies presented in this edition provide information on how emerging technologies can be applied to analyze biophysical properties and the status of TDFs across different regions in Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Bolivia.

Features

• Includes all new content and does not replace the previous edition.
• Offers insight into the application of airborne and terrestrial laser scanning in tropical dry forests.
• Discusses ecology, remote sensing, hydrological modelling and ecosystem services.
• Includes novel information to build additional comparisons with peer-reviewed datasets.
• Highlights scientific achievements from different countries with tropical dry forests.
• Enables readers to comprehend and apply further comparative studies within the same ecosystem.

This is an excellent book for professionals, academics, and students in the fields of Remote Sensing, Hydrology, and Environmental Science, as well as for Geographers, Ecologists, and individuals involved in the management of tropical dry forests.

Dr. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa is a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta and serves as the director of the University’s Centre for Earth Observation Sciences (CEOS). His research combines remote sensing with ground-based wireless sensor networks to enhance environmental monitoring and climate change assessment in tropical dry forests. Dr. Sanchez-Azofeifa has received numerous accolades, including a Fulbright Fellowship, the Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship from Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, the Canadian Forest Service Merit Award, and the Sir McMaster Fellowship from Australia’s Commonwealth Science and Research Innovation Organization (CSIRO). Furthermore, he has been a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, and he holds an adjunct professor position at the University of Helsinki, Finland. At the University of Alberta, he has been honoured with the Faculty of Science Research Award for Outstanding Contributions, the McCalla Research Professorship, and the Faculty of Science Research Fellowship, among many other distinctions. Dr. Sanchez-Azofeifa has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles and authored three books, significantly advancing the fields of environmental science and remote sensing, particularly in relation to tropical dry forests throughout the Americas.