Dear Colleagues,

You are cordially invited to attend the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth ( ISDE6 ) with the theme of Digital Earth in Action and to visit Beijing, China in September, 2009. ISDE6 will continue the tradition of gathering world-class scientists, engineers and educators engaged in the fields of digital earth, earth observation, geo-informatics and relevant applications to review the progress of Digital Earth during the last decade and discuss the achievements of Digital Earth and the recent developments.

Since the promulgation of the Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth at the First International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE) in 1999, Digital Earth has prospered and made great progress in both theory and applications. At the 2nd ISDE held in Canada in 2001, the theme was: "Beyond information infrastructure". The 3rd ISDE and 4th ISDE held in the CzechRepublic in 2003 and Japan in 2005, respectively, put Digital Earth back to a global scale with the theme "Information Resources for Global Sustainability" and "Digital Earth as a Global Commons". Following that, an International Summit on Digital Earth focusing on Sustainability was successfully held in New Zealand in 2006. The 5th ISDE, held in the USA in 2007 had the theme "Bringing Digital Earth Down to Earth". The Digital Earth Summit on "Geoinformatics: Tools for Global Change Research" will be held in Germany in November 2008.The 6th ISDE "Digital Earth in Action" will mainly focus on the technological advances and the various emerging applications linking digital earth and earth observation. >>>

Guo Huadong
Chairman, Organizing Committee of ISDE6