The Mekong Basin in Southeast Asia is one of the largest international river basins in the world, providing the basis for the livelihoods of over 75 million people. However, ongoing socio-economic growth and related anthropogenic interventions impact the region's ecosystems, and there is an urgent need for the monitoring of the basins' land surface dynamics. Remote sensing has evolved as a key tool for this task, allowing for up-to-date analyses and regular monitoring of environmental dynamics beyond physical or political boundaries and at various temporal and spatial scales. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Remote Sensing.

1. Preface: Remote sensing the Mekong Claudia Kuenzer 2. Comparing global land-cover products - implications for geoscience applications: an investigation for the trans-boundary Mekong Basin Claudia Kuenzer, Patrick Leinenkugel, Matthias Vollmuth, and Stefan Dech 3. Land-surface temperature dynamics in the Upper Mekong Basin derived from MODIS time series C.M. Frey and C. Kuenzer 4. Sensitivity analysis for predicting continuous fields of tree-cover and fractional land-cover distributions in cloud-prone areas Patrick Leinenkugel, Michel L. Wolters, Claudia Kuenzer, Natascha Oppelt, and Stefan Dech 5. Recent climate variability and its impact on precipitation, temperature, and vegetation dynamics in the Lancang River headwater area of China Chong Huang, Yafei Li, Gaohuan Liu, Hailong Zhang, and Qingsheng Liu 6. Drought impact on vegetation productivity in the Lower Mekong Basin Binghua Zhang, Li Zhang, Huadong Guo, Patrick Leinenkugel, Yu Zhou, Li Li, and Qian Shen 7. Suitability of SAR imagery for automatic flood mapping in the Lower Mekong Basin Felix Greifeneder, Wolfgang Wagner, Daniel Sabel, and Vahid Naeimi 8. Ecosystem assessment in the Tonle Sap Lake region of Cambodia using RADARSAT-2 Wide Fine-mode SAR data Lu Zhang, Huadong Guo, Xinwu Li, and Liyan Wang 9. The Ha Tien Plain - wetland monitoring using remote-sensing techniques Tim Funkenberg, Tran Thai Binh, Florian Moder, and Stefan Dech 10. Operational multi-sensor monitoring of turbidity for the entire Mekong Delta Thomas Heege, Viacheslav Kiselev, Magnus Wettle, and Nguyen Nghia Hung