IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2019 - 107

EDUCATION
ANABELLA FERRAL, CARLOS M. SCAVUZZO, ROMINA SOLORZA, JORGE MARQUEZ, MERCEDES SALVIA,
LUIS GÓMEZ-DÉNIZ, CLAUDIA NOTARNICOLA, FRANCESCA CIGNA, CARLOS LOPEZ MARTINEZ,
AVIK BHATTACHARYA, XIAOFENG LI, ADRIANO CAMPS, AND ALEJANDRO C. FRERY

Remote Sensing Spring School in Argentina
SAR for Environmental and Production Monitoring

I

n this column, we present a summary of the Third Remote Sensing Spring School at the Teófilo Tabanera
Space Center, Córdoba, Argentina, 10-21 September
2018, to support the launch of the Satélite Argentino de Observación con Microondas (SAOCOM) 1A synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) mission. Nearly all of the lecturers were IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) senior
members. More than 90 specialists in a variety of areas
and representing South and Central American countries
and others around the world were present. Several international collaborations were proposed during discussions
and meetings among participants and experts.
The school had a huge impact, and its multiplying
effect will be positive for the region. It is essential to provide continuity to this valuable initiative and communicate the lessons learned. We include here the main conclusions agreed upon by the organizers and participants
according to academic and stakeholder perspectives for
the future. We also provide links to professors, theoretical and practice materials, participants' presentations,
and interviews with lecturers and students.
The GRSS Argentine Chapter and the Gulich Institute
at the Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE)-University of Córdoba organized the school, which
was supported by the Centro Latinoamericano de Formación Interdisciplinaria (CELFI). The event was developed following the framework of the annual meetings held
by the GRSS local Chapter and the Gulich Institute. The
organizing committee obtained funding to support 40 Latin
American participants and seven international experts. The
call for presentations was published in March 2018, and we
had more than 200 applications. On the basis of capacity,
we opened the school with 97 participants: 34 from across
Latin America and 63 from different regions of Argentina
(Figure 1).

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2019.2933136
Date of publication: 23 September 2019

SEPTEMBER 2019

IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

The 11-day program included the following topics:
◗ an introduction to the SAR technique
◗ the acquisition, geometry, focalization, and distortions of SAR images
◗ SAR image noise and preprocessing techniques
◗ statistics for SAR image analysis
◗ concepts of SAR interferometry
◗ mapping and monitoring of slow-moving landslides
with multitemporal satellite radar imagery
◗ advanced concepts in polarimetric SAR image analysis
◗ geometric methods for the analysis of multitemporal
and multipolarized SAR images
◗ change detection with SAR images
◗ polarimetric SAR image classification using reactiondiffusion systems
◗ SAR applications in oceanography
◗ SAOCOM 1A products and distribution.
On the school's last day, 20 participants and the international experts wrote a final-remarks document, approved by all of the attendees, which we summarize in
this report.
In the framework of the Third Remote Sensing Spring
School, specialists related to forest fires and land degradation, agricultural and forestry production, meteorology, wetlands, bioindicators, biomass, crop phenology,
disaster risk, hydrographic basins, the cryosphere, hydrocarbon monitoring, interferometry, geomorphology, urban planning, and SAR product validation gathered. Scientists and stakeholders from Paraguay, Cuba,
Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile,
Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, and Nigeria were present. During the event, experts from Brazil, Spain, India, the United States, Italy, Luxembourg,
and Argentina discussed the physical fundamentals
and statistics of SAR data, polarimetric decompositions, SAR image filtering, and SAR applications in agriculture, soil science, oceanography, glaciers, natural
hazards, and interferometry.
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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2019

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