144 CHAPTERS IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 VERALDO LIESENBERG, JOSÉ MARCATO JR., RAUL QUEIROZ FEITOSA, ALESSANDRA RODRIGUES GOMES, JEFERSSON ALEX DOS SANTOS, RAFAEL LEMOS PAES, EDSON A. MITISHITA, ANTONIO M.G. TOMMASELLI, FÁTIMA N. SOMBRA DE MEDEIROS, AND ALEJANDRO C. FRERY T he IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Brazil Chapter started its activities in 2015 when it was officially founded through the efforts of enthusiastic professionals and young members from different Brazilian universities, industries, and research institutes. This group had already taken part in other cosponsored GRSS conferences regularly and decided to establish the first IEEE/GRSS Chapter in Brazil. The motivation came from seeing how professionals, re- searchers, and students from other countries conducted their scientific activities and outreach programs and successfully established networking under a GRSS Chap- ter framework. However, the number of active members at that time was small, and those members were from differ- ent regions in the fifth largest country in the world. By promoting the first GRSS Young Professionals (YPs) and International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) Summer School (YP&SS) in Curitiba (Paraná state) at the end of 2015, the GRSS Brazil Chapter attracted 30 members in 2016 (Table 1). With partial support from the ISPRS, this event has been held yearly in different regions of the country, specifically, Presidente Prudente (the São Paulo state) in 2015, Lages (the Santa Catarina state) in 2017, Campo Grande (the Mato Grosso do Sul state) in 2018, and Sorocaba (the São Paulo state) in 2019. The number of members reached its historical maximum in 2019, which motivated this report of the main activities of the Chapter, carried out during 2019. A significant percentage of new memberships re- sulted from local initiatives promoted voluntarily by board members of the GRSS Brazil Chapter in differ- ent parts of the country. As a result, we increased the number of members from other Brazilian states (i.e., the Distrito Federal, Bahia, Pará, Rio Grande do Sul, and Mato Grosso do Sul states) as well as the numbers of women members (Table 1), which grew from two in 2016, when the GRSS Brazil Chapter was founded, to 26 in 2019 (Table 1). The number of student members also followed this trend, with the establishment of new GRSS student Chapters. Several activities (see the “Technical Activities” sec- tion) in the form of technical seminars were organized and conducted by GRSS Brazil Chapter members during 2019. The challenges and actions designed to increase the number of members are highlighted in the follow- ing sections. TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES The Chapter conducted 11 significant activities in 2019, which we report here in chronological order. GRSS BRAZIL CHAPTER INITIATIVES FOR YPS On 27 February 2019, the head of the Amazon Regional Center/Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Dr. Alessandra Rodrigues Gomes (see Figure 1), delivered the talk “Forest Monitoring Initiatives, and Re- search Opportunities.” It was dedicated to both graduate and undergraduate student YPs in the forest engineering program at the Santa Catarina State University (UDESC) in Lages. The major idea behind this event was to foster networking within a student Chapter framework. THE GRSS AND ISPRS SOCIETIES AND CAREER OPPORTUNITIES On 27 March 2019, members of the GRSS Brazil Chap- ter board, Prof. Rafael Lemos Paes from the Institute The IEEE GRSS Brazil Chapter: Status and Activities in 2019 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2020.3019017 Date of current version: 16 December 2020 THE SBSR IS A BIENNIAL EVENT WITH A LONG- STANDING TRADITION OF MORE THAN 40 YEARS IN THE LOCAL REMOTE SENSING COMMUNITY.