Human-environment interactions and scalable remote sensing

There is much interest in using big data for research on rapid social and environmental change. For all the excitement about big data, however, there are “deserts in the deluge” of these data because there is surprisingly little detailed information about human-environment systems for much of the globe, especially for before the year 2000 and for much of the global south. Remotely sensed imagery is a valuable form of big data that promises to fill in some of these gaps and help advance our understanding coupled human-environment systems.