Lillesand, Thomas M.

Over 125 publications in the area of remote sensing
Co-Author (along with Ralph W. Kiefer) of the book "Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation," Fourth Edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2000, 723p

Selected Awards, Honors and Societies

The Alan Gordon Memorial Award from American Society of Photogrammetry for significant achievements in remote sensing and photographic interpretation
Earle J. Fennell Award, American Congress on Surveying and Mapping
American Society of Civil Engineers
Fellow and Past-President of American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
Science Advisory Panel, Earth Observing System Land Process Distributed Active Archive, EROS Data Center
Academic Board, John C. Stennis Space Center
Certified Photogrammetrist and Mapping Scientist, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

Other Major Responsibilities

Director, Environmental Remote Sensing Center
Chair, Environmental Monitoring Graduate Proram, Institute for Environmental Studies

Summary

I have broad interest in the application of both aircraft and satellite remote sensing techniques to problems in natural resource management, ecosystem science,commercial applications, transportation engineering, and environmental monitoring. Our research group currently deals with a range of studies as varied as monitoring lake water quality using satellite data, integrating satellite-derived crop cover information with digitized soil map data to facilitate soil erosion modeling, developing digital image processing techniques to enhance the detectability and analysis of hazardous waste sites on historical photographs, assessing transportation infrastructure, hyperspectral scanning, analysis of radar data, and preparing automated inventories of land use/land cover and conditions along the local to global continuum.

Our program has a quantitative emphasis in that it deals with software development, spectral pattern recognition, spatial pattern analysis and aspects of image understanding. The program, however, also affords the quantitatively inclined student an opportunity to work directly on the solution of important natural resource and environmental problems. For example, our "Satellite Lake Observatory Initiative" includes state of the art satellite technology applied to monitoring lake water quality on a regioanal basis.

Students in our program not only make use of department facilities, they also have ready access to those of the Environmental Remote Sensing Center within the Institute for Environmental Studies. These facilities include several dedicated workstations, an extensively equipped teaching and research laboratory, and access to real-time satellite collection facilities. Our long-term ecological studies are conducted jointly with the Center for Limnology.

Our faculty and students enjoy a range of benefits from the opportunities for interdisciplinary research on our campus. In fact, the graduate students studying remote sensing in our various departments, in composite, comprise the largest such group in the country.

In addition, I am very interested in public policy issues surrounding space remote sensing and its general role in the age of information. In this respect, I welcome the opportunity to work with students who recognize the special responsibility and challenge involved in the application of remote sensing technology to the solution of the present and prospective environmental problems confronting humankind.

Copyright 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Date last modified: 04-Aug-2008
Content by: tmlilles@facstaff.wisc.edu
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