About 1,500 people are expected for the 2011 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) in Vancouver, British Columbia, from July 24-29, at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

This year’s event was to be held in August in Sendai, Japan, but was moved and rescheduled after that city suffered catastrophic damage from an offshore earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11.

This year’s Symposium theme is ‰ÛÏBeyond the Frontiers: Expanding our Knowledge of the World.‰Û

‰ÛÏWe cannot touch the stars, but we can explore them by remote sensing technology,‰Û 2011 IGARSS’ General Chair Motoyuki Sato wrote in announcing the event. ‰ÛÏRemote sensing is a technology that can expand our knowledge beyond these frontiers.‰Û

He added, ‰ÛÏWe can observe the Earth’s environment on a global scale, beyond that which can be seen through our own eyes. Subsurface sensing that is applied below the surface of the ground and the ocean, and even beneath the surface of man-made construction, provides us with knowledge of the unknown world. Boundaries between countries have no meaning when the Earth’s environment is observed by remote sensing technology.‰Û

A Final Technical Program Schedule is available online, and includes a Paper Search function.

Technical program topics for the Symposium include Electromagnetic Modeling, InSAR and High Resolution SAR, Land Use and Land Cover Change, Soils and Soil Moisture, Ocean Temperature and Salinity, and a Student Paper Contest.

Top sponsors of the event include the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, along with NASA of the United States.