Earth Observation and Sustainable Development Goals

Authors

Ramesh P. Singh, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Editorial

Publication Date

6-30-2020

Abstract

"Planet Earth is a dynamic body, which is home to 7.8 billion people, and strong interactions exist between the human population and the Earth’s different components (land, ocean, biosphere, cryosphere and atmosphere). The impacts of such interactions are observed from the day-to-day changes in weather, solar radiation, cloudy conditions, poor visibility, rainfall and frequency of natural hazards around the globe. The dynamic nature of the Earth is evident at the ocean coast through the ocean waves, the nature of these waves varies from day-to-day and also morning to evening. For example, the heights of waves can now be predicted through ocean modelling studies, which requires input from ground and satellite data. The Earth’s components, the lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and biosphere, interact closely with the human population (Figure 1). As a result, changes may not be visualized on a day-to-day basis; however, short- and long-term changes can be observed by using various Earth-observation systems. Over the years, the Earth has become more complex, due to strong interactions between the various components of the Earth’s systems and the influence of population living and interacting closely. Such interactions lead to degradation of the environment and to the depletion of resources, raise question of sustainability and pose a threat for our survival on Earth. This calls for the attention of all section of scientists to understand interaction, which is a challenging job in this complex system of systems. This also calls the attention of everyone on this Earth planet."

Comments

This article was originally published in Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, volume 11, issue 1, in 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/19475705.2020.1784561

Recommended Citation

Ramesh P. Singh (2020) Earth observation and sustainable development goals, Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, 11:1, (i)-(vi), https://doi.org/10.1080/19475705.2020.1784561

Copyright

The author

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.