Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing: Principles and Theoretical Background

Abstract

Although the number of studies using remote sensing in the thermal infrared wavelength increased rapidly in the last ten years, the domain is still an often neglected sub-discipline within the field of remote sensing. Reasons for this range from a limited availability of space-borne sensors acquiring data in the thermal infrared, TIR; domain to the—generally—lower spatial resolution of this data, when compared with other—for example, optical—data, to last but not least different data analyses approaches, which are mandatory when dealing with TIR data. Thus, it is the goal of this chapter to provide a comprehensive overview of the principles of remote sensing in the thermal infrared. We address the theoretic background of the TIR domain, including important physical laws, address parameters such as kinetic and radiance temperature, emissivity and thermal inertia, discuss the pre-processing, the analyses, as well as the validation of thermal data, and present a range of illustrative application examples. Much of this chapter has been reformulated based on Kuenzer and Dech (2013).