Book review: Top 20 Essential Skills for Imagery and Remote Sensing
reviewed by Kevin Dyke
Humber, Thomas and Jeff Liedtke. Top 20 Essential Skills for Imagery and Remote Sensing. Redlands: Esri Press, 2026. 330 p. $79.99. ISBN: 978159488212.
Top 20 Essential Skills for Imagery and Remote Sensing is part of a series of “Top 20” books from Esri Press. In the book, authors Thomas Humber and Jeff Liedtke introduce a variety of ways to work with imagery and remoting sensing using Esri software. The book uses the ArcGIS Pro desktop GIS software as its tool of choice, apart from a few chapters towards the end utilizing Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform.
The book consists of 20 chapters divided over three sections. The first section focuses on the fundamentals, the second on more advanced data exploration and visualization, and the third section focuses on analysis. The first chapter provides a competent introduction to remote sensing and overview of the software’s remote sensing capabilities, while the final chapter provides a summary of the books contents and how its contents may be used to support emergency response decision making. The first and last chapters, by virtue of not having step-by-step software tutorials, will remain up-to-date longer than the others.
The remaining chapters each focus on a different capability of ArcGIS Pro. For example, chapter six covers georeferencing. There is a short preamble in each chapter before the accompanying step-by-step tutorials. The tutorials are well paced and include ample color illustrations. The data for each chapter is available for download from a well-organized ArcGIS Online group.
The book is marketed as “ideal for GIS professionals who want to deepen their understanding of imagery, as well as students eager to learn about remote sensing” (https://www.esri.com/en-us/esri-press/browse/top-20-essential-skills-for-imagery-and-remote-sensing). While the book does an admirable job of touring ArcGIS Pro’s remote sensing functionality, I hesitate to call them skills. As stated above, the book’s content consists largely of step-by-step instructions for software use. The book lacks the conceptual explanatory material that a complete remote sensing novice would need. Without a scaffolding of knowledge, users struggle to apply software functionality to situations not clearly included in step-by-step exercise material. Thus, I would only recommend the book for students in cases where it will be complemented by other material. Only then would readers walk away equipped with the said “skills.”
On the other hand, the straightforward nature of the book makes it an excellent choice for geospatial librarians. Librarians providing support for GIS may find themselves asked for assistance with a remote sensing question. In the case of a librarian lacking a remote sensing background, this volume could serve an important reference role.
Kevin Dyke
Maps and Spatial Data Curator
Oklahoma State University Library
Stillwater, Oklahoma
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