Chapter 1
WELCOME ADDRESS
K. Hemilä
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Helsinki, Finland.
Dear participants in the ENAMORS-workshop,
The topic of your meeting is optical remote sensing and its development
and exploitation for the observing, inventorying and monitoring of changes
taking place on terrestrial surfaces. This is an important topic, because most
human activities—starting from food and raw materials production and
ending in processing the waste produced by society—take place on the
terrestrial surface. Up-to-date information concerning these matters forms
the basis for systematic decision making on both the national and the
international levels.
On the European scale of things, Finland is territorially a relatively large
country. Because our country is also sparsely populated, favorable
conditions exist for using remote sensing to inventory our natural resources
and monitor the state of our environment. Therefore the development of
remote sensing has been viewed in Finland as the most important field of
development of space technology. Remote sensing is being developed in
three areas:
Finland as a member of the European Space Agency participates in its
Earth Observation program,
Finland as a member of the European Union participates in its
Environment and Climate Program, collaborates with its Joint Research
Center and carries out operative remote sensing in agriculture, and
Finland develops its national remote sensing capability.
The present meeting is a part of our collaboration with the European
Union.
3
M.M. Verstraete et al. (eds.), Observing Land from Space: Science, Customers and Technology, 3–5.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
WELCOME ADDRESS
K. Hemilä
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Helsinki, Finland.
Dear participants in the ENAMORS-workshop,
The topic of your meeting is optical remote sensing and its development
and exploitation for the observing, inventorying and monitoring of changes
taking place on terrestrial surfaces. This is an important topic, because most
human activities—starting from food and raw materials production and
ending in processing the waste produced by society—take place on the
terrestrial surface. Up-to-date information concerning these matters forms
the basis for systematic decision making on both the national and the
international levels.
On the European scale of things, Finland is territorially a relatively large
country. Because our country is also sparsely populated, favorable
conditions exist for using remote sensing to inventory our natural resources
and monitor the state of our environment. Therefore the development of
remote sensing has been viewed in Finland as the most important field of
development of space technology. Remote sensing is being developed in
three areas:
Finland as a member of the European Space Agency participates in its
Earth Observation program,
Finland as a member of the European Union participates in its
Environment and Climate Program, collaborates with its Joint Research
Center and carries out operative remote sensing in agriculture, and
Finland develops its national remote sensing capability.
The present meeting is a part of our collaboration with the European
Union.
3
M.M. Verstraete et al. (eds.), Observing Land from Space: Science, Customers and Technology, 3–5.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.