Foreword to the Special Issue on Applied Earth Observation and Remote Sensing in India

India is at the forefront in several areas of research related to Earth observation and remote sensing. Its space program has been in the news often in recent times, but other aspects of Indian research in geosciences and remote sensing remain relatively unknown to the international community of researchers in the field. It is the objective of this special issue of IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (IEEE JSTARS) - "Applied Earth Observation and Remote Sensing in India," to highlight the work of Indian scientists in these areas. A call for papers was announced during November 2016. In response, 60 manuscripts were received from variety of fields. Out of these, 17 papers were selected for publication. The selected papers are briefly summarized.