ABSTRACT
Impervious surfaces have been widely recognized as an important land surface component due to their significance in both urban environmental and socioeconomic studies. Therefore, the estimation and mapping of impervious surfaces have become increasingly important all over the world. However, accurate estimation of impervious surfaces is still challenging due to the diversity of urban land covers, which produce various spectral confusions between different land surface materials. Moreover, most of the previous research focused on urbanized areas in temperate latitude regions where many important cities and metropolitans are located. Consequently, the accurate estimation of impervious surfaces in tropical and subtropical regions, where the land cover diversity is unique due to unique seasonal climatology and plant phenology, becomes even more challenging than in other regions of the world. The main objective of this book has been to promote the combined use of optical and SAR images to improve the accuracy of ISE in tropical and subtropical regions. The seasonal characteristics of land covers and their impact on ISE in tropical and subtropical regions have been investigated. This section summarizes the major findings and conclusions of this research, highlights the limitations of the study, and suggests possible research topics for future research.
