Page 7 - MATLAB Recipes for Earth Sciences

Preface VII

photographs and satellite images are often projected upon digital eleva-
tion models.

6. Chapter 9 – Data sets in earth sciences are tremendously increasing in the
number of variables and data points. Multivariate methods are applied to
a great variety of types of large data sets, including even satellite images.
The reader particularly interested in multivariate methods is advised to
read Chapters 3 and 4 before proceeding to this chapter.

I hope that the various readers will now find their way through the book.
Experienced MATLAB users familiar with basic statistics are invited to pro-
ceed to Chapters 5 and 6 (the time series), Chapters 7 and 8 (spatial data and
images) or Chapter 9 (multivariate analysis) immediately, which contain
both an introduction to the subjects as well as very advanced and special
procedures for analyzing data in earth sciences. It is recommended to the
beginners, however, to read Chapters 1 to 4 carefully before getting into the
advanced methods.
I thank the NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER
Science Team and the director Mike Abrams for allowing me to include the
ASTER images in the book. The book has benefit from the comments of a

large number of colleagues and students. I gratefully acknowledge my col-
leagues who commented earlier versions of the manuscript, namely Robin
Gebbers, Norbert Marwan, Ira Ojala, Lydia Olaka, Jim Renwick, Jochen
Rössler, Rolf Romer, and Annette Witt. Thanks also to the students Mathis
Hein, Stefanie von Lonski and Matthias Gerber, who helped me to improve
the book. I very much appreciate the expertise and patience of Elisabeth
Sillmann who created the graphics and the complete page design of the
book. I also acknowledge Courtney Esposito leading the author program at
The MathWorks, Claudia Olrogge and Annegret Schumann at Mathworks
Deutschland, Wolfgang Engel at Springer, Andreas Bohlen and Brunhilde
Schulz at UP Transfer GmbH. I would like to thank Thomas Schulmeister
who helped me to get a campus license for MATLAB at Potsdam University.
The book is dedicated to Peter Koch, the late system administrator of the

Department of Geosciences who died during the final writing stages of the
manuscript and who helped me in all kinds of computer problems during the
last few years.

Potsdam, September 2005

Martin Trauth