This document provides an overview of recent advances in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) information extraction algorithms and applications presented at the 2010 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). It reviews developments in target decompositions, orientation angles, classification, segmentation, texture modeling, speckle filtering, compact polarimetry, and high-resolution PolSAR over the past five years. New satellite systems like ALOS, TerraSAR-X, and RADARSAT-2 have enabled applications in areas such as agriculture, forestry, geology and oceanography.