With the start of 2013, Remote Sensing is instituting an annual award to recognize outstanding papers related to the science and application of remote sensing technology that meet the high standards of this journal. We are pleased to announce the “Remote Sensing Best Paper Award” for 2013. Nominations were solicited from the Editorial Board members, with all papers published in 2009 eligible for consideration.

Article Award

1st prize: Sanna Kaasalainen, Anssi Krooks, Antero Kukko and Harri Kaartinen
Radiometric Calibration of Terrestrial Laser Scanners with External Reference Targets

2nd prize: Steffen Fritz, Ian McCallum, Christian Schill, Christoph Perger, Roland Grillmayer, FrédéricAchard, Florian Kraxner and Michael Obersteiner
Geo-Wiki.Org: The Use of Crowdsourcing to Improve Global Land Cover

Review Award

Susan Kay, John D. Hedley and Samantha Lavender
Sun Glint Correction of High and Low Spatial Resolution Images of Aquatic Scenes: a Review ofMethods for Visible and Near-Infrared Wavelengths

For more details, please refer to the Editorial by Dr. Prasad S. Thenkabail, Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing.

Congratulations to Sanna Kaasalainen, Anssi Krooks, Antero Kukko and Harri Kaartinen (Department of Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry), who have been awarded the Remote Sensing Best Paper Award 2013. Their paper, “Radiometric Calibration of Terrestrial Laser Scanners with External Reference Targets” received the 1st prize in the category “Terristrial Laser Scanning”.

The awarded article describes a case study of radiometric calibration for two phase-shift continuous wave (CW) terrestrial scanners and discusses some major issues in correcting and applying the intensity data, and a practical calibration scheme based on external reference targets.

On an annual basis the Remote Sensing Best Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers that are related to remote sensing and meet the aims, scope and high standards of Remote Sensing.