It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Prof. Dr. Ruiliang Pu, Associate Editor of Geosciences and Editorial Board Member of Remote Sensing, in August 2023.

He was a professor at the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida (USF), specializing in remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and ecology. Prof. Dr. Pu was born in Wuxi, China. He received an M.Sc. (1985) from Nanjing Forestry University (NFU), China, and earned a Ph.D. (Cartography and Geographic Information System, 2000) conducted at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Upon receiving his Ph.D., Prof. Pu continued his research at UC Berkeley until 2005, before joining the faculty at USF in 2006.

Prof. Dr. Pu was a pioneer in the fields of remote sensing, GIS, and spatial statistics with applications in natural hazard monitoring and biophysical and biochemical parameters extraction. Throughout his academic career, Prof. Dr. Pu published more than 100 journal articles and book chapters in English and more than 26 journal articles and books in Chinese. He was a highly published and widely cited author and scholar. Prof. Dr. Pu was awarded science and technology prizes three times by the Chinese Government between 1986 and 1991 in recognition of his excellent research achievements.

His death is a significant loss to the academic community, as well as to everyone close to him. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues as we offer our profound condolences.