John Russell Jensen is a Carolina Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He majored in physical geography and analytical cartography and remote sensing at the following institutions: B.A., California State University at Fullerton, 1971; Master's, Brigham Young University, 1972; Ph.D., UCLA, 1976. While attending UCLA, he worked full-time for Aero Service Corporation where he was trained in photogrammetry on analytical stereoplotters and orthophotoscopes. In 1977, he accepted a professorship at the University of Georgia. In 1981, Jensen went to the University of South Carolina as an associate professor and helped to develop a new Ph.D. program in "Geographic Information Science" specializing in remote sensing, cartography, and GIS. The academic program is now one of the most respected in the nation. Jensen became a USC "Carolina Distinguished Professor" in 1986.

His research has focused on:

• remote sensing of coastal wetland biophysical resources (e.g., biomass, leaf-area-index)
• development of digital image processing algorithms to extract and model change
• development of error evaluation statistics for assessing the accuracy of multiple-date change detection
• improvement of the remote sensing and GIS supported environmental sensitivity index (ESI) mapping used worldwide for protecting coastal resources
• modeling water quality parameters (chlorophyll, dissolved inorganic matter, suspended sediment) using high spatial and spectral resolution remote sensor data

Jensen was President of the American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing in 1996. He has published more than 100 refereed journal articles dealing primarily with remote sensing of the environment. He was a co-author of ASPRS' Manual of Remote Sensing (1^st and 2^nd Eds.) and Manual of Photographic Interpretation (2^nd Ed., 1997). He contributed to People and Pixels (1998) and chaired the writing of Down to Earth: Geographic Information for Sustainable Development (2002) published by the National Research Council, National Academy Press. His textbooks Remote Sensing of the Environment (2000) and Introductory Digital Image Processing (3rd Edition, 2004) are used throughout the world.

Jensen has mentored 55 master's students and 25 Ph.D.'s in remote sensing. All of them are working in the field.