T HE Kyoto & Carbon (K&C) Initiative is an international collaboration led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that revolves primarily around the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Arrayed L-band SAR (PALSAR). The Initiative builds on the experience gained from the Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) and Global Boreal Forest Mapping (GBFM) projects [1], [2], in which SAR data from the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1) were used to generate consistent image mosaics over the entire tropical and boreal zones of Earth. While the GRFM and GBFM projects were undertaken already in the mid 1990s, they demonstrated the utility of L-band SAR data for mapping and monitoring forest and wetland areas and the importance of pro- viding spatially and temporally consistent satellite acquisitions for regional-scale monitoring and surveillance. The K&C Initiative was established by JAXA in 2001 to sup- port data and information needs of international environmental conventions, carbon cycle science and conservation of the envi- ronment (referred to as the "3C" application areas). The project is led by JAXA's Earth Observation Research Center (EORC) and supported by an international Science Team consisting of 25 research groups from 14 countries. The K&C Science Team is also a scientific advisory group to JAXA and provides scien- tific support and advice to the Ramsar Wetlands Convention and the Forest Carbon Tracking Task of the Group on Earth Obser- vations (GEO). The objective of the K&C Initiative is to take advantage of the specific features of ALOS PALSAR and, in particular, the global systematic acquisition strategy that provides consistent and repetitive wall-to-wall coverages over all land areas [3], and to develop regional-scale applications and thematic products that can be used to meet the specific information requirements relating to the "3C" application areas. The Initiative is under- taken within the context of three themes which relate to three specific global biomes: forests, wetlands, and deserts. A fourth theme deals with the generation of continental-scale ALOS PALSAR image mosaics as an intermediate input product to the three thematic themes. This special issue of the IEEE JOURNAL ON SPECIAL TOPICS IN EARTH OBSERVATION AND REMOTE SENSING (J-STARS) con- tains a selection of papers that outline some of the key out- comes from the four themes from the first three years of ALOS operations. Further scientific reports, the K&C Science Plan, mosaic data sets and thematic products generated within the Ini- tiative are available from the K&C homepage (http://www.eorc. jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/kyoto/kyoto_index.htm).< Réduire