In a context of global climate change, we need to develop better understanding of dynamic coupled human and environmental systems. Appropriate satellite sensors have routinely collected information about the Earth surface change. One of important observations is remotely sensed thermal data that is needed to assess ecosystem conditions, watershed health, natural hazards, and urban climate variation. The use of these data presents us opportunity to advance our scientific understanding of various dynamic processes of climate and ecosystems. Examples of such opportunities include the enhancement of land cover methodologies, analysis of the urban heat island effect or vegetation monitoring (including from disturbance by biotic agents), and hydrological modeling.
This session seeks presentations describing existing and ongoing research, applications, and services relying on thermal data, with a strong focus on innovative approaches addressing societal challenges and cross-domain research, from local to global scales.

Potential session topics include, but are not limited to:
• Land cover and change mapping
• Urban Heat Island Effect;
• Standardization of long term reference data records;
• Near-real time monitoring and Time Series Analysis of thermal datasets;
• Cross-domain applications (e.g. land/water; urban/forest);
• Thermal and multispectral data fusion;
• Applications of thermal data to ecosystem research and public health.