Electromagnetic waves in remote sensing

Due to the advance of space-borne remote sensing technology in recent decad es, the transition from data to information of the earth environment has be come of great importance. Interaction of electromagnetic waves with the ear th environment should be well modeled and applied to information retrieval. The most important advances of polarimetric scattering for SAR imagery and vector radiative transfer theory for scattering and emission of natural me dia are briefly presented. Some examples from the SAR SIR-C and DMSP SSM/I observations and information inversions are demonstrated. Some key points f or future research are discussed.