Optical remote sensing techniques are being widely used for continuous, systematic monitoring of atmospheric constituents and meteorological parameters using ground-, air-, and satellite-based remote sensing instruments. The ability of laser/ telescope systems to reach out to great distances in the atmosphere has opened up a major field of applied optics that now attracts the efforts of scientists and engineers from many countries. 

This technology makes it possible to rapidly obtain profiles of atmospheric properties (e.g. temperature and wind) and constituents (e.g. H2O, O3, and CO2). Lidar practice now incorporates a wide variety of optical phenomena (absorption, fluorescence, etc.). Applications are increasing in the areas of meteorology, urban and industrial air pollution, aircraft safety, global monitoring of ozone and climate change, and the basic processes of atmospheric dynamics. Global wind profiling and CO2 measurement from space requires high-energy and high-power lasers for extended operation. Laser risk reduction, technology maturation and life time testing at component and system level has become an important issue for space deployment. Similarly, thermal, contamination, and radiation effects are need to be fully understood for developing highly efficient, long life, high power laser sources for long-term operation in space. As the world moves towards increased population and industrial development, laser remote sensing will become more and more important as the method of choice for obtaining the environmental data needed in intelligent decision-making for resource management. This conference focuses on current and future laser remote sensing technologies, techniques, applications, and observations related to environmental monitoring.