REMOTE SENSING:

Remote sensing is the observation of surfaces or

objects while not being in direct contact with them.
By this definition, cameras are remote sensors,
observing the environment around us but not
requiring us to touch the objects photographed;
our eyes also fall into this category. The more
commonly accepted example of remote sensing is
the use of satellites in orbit around the earth to
observe the surface for monitoring purposes. Since
the development of Google Earth, access to such
data has become available to everyone for free.
However, remote sensing for environmental
monitoring is more involved than simply looking at
one's neighbourhood from above: it has the
capability to provide wide-scale observations of all
geomorphological features on Earth's surface. We
are able to monitor the changing shape of Earth's
surface, assess the processes occurring, and
identify landforms in remote regions that might
otherwise be inaccessible.
In its most simple application, we can take a
remotely sensed image of Earth's surface and
interpret what we see to produce a
geomorphological map. This allows us to map
regions rapidly that might otherwise take many
weeks of manual exploration and cartography.
Such mapping processes can even be automated,
to a certain extent. One constraint that we have,
however, relates to the spatial resolution of
particular sensors, such as the smallest area on
Earth's surface that a sensor can distinguish. For
continental-scale features such as mountain
ranges, sensors with a coarser resolution may be
sufficient (for example, the NASA sensor, MODIS,
which at best has a pixel size of 250 m) (see
Figure 1). For smaller scale features, such as
mountain glaciers, or even sand dunes (see Figure
2), the use of higher spatial resolution sensors will
be necessary. For example, Worldview II is a new
satellite launched in 2009 with a sub-metre spatial
resolution.

What is also useful with regard to today's remote

sensors is the availability of hyperspectral imagery;
that is, imagery viewing the surface not just in the
visible bands to produce what might look like a
photograph, but imagery viewing the surface in
different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.
This allows the detection of certain materials which
often reflect differences in the geomorphology. For
example, we can distinguish different rock and
sediment types and can inspect for different
minerals within rock; we can assess vegetation
cover and we can, to a certain extent, determine
the moisture content of the surface.

Aside from actual images of the surface, remote

sensing also has the geomorphological application
of being able to provide three-dimensional
representations of the surface in the production of
digital elevation models (see Figure 3). On a
number of orbiting satellites (and also on some
airplanes), radar systems actively beam
electromagnetic radiation to Earth and detect these
as they bounce off the surface and return to the
corresponding sensor; the longer this process
takes, the further the reflecting surface must be
from the sensor, thereby indicating the shape of
the land below. Not only is this useful for an
instantaneous representation of the topography
but it is immensely useful for monitoring how this
may change over time, perhaps due to subsidence
or uplift of the surface, or the movement of a
glacier

The utility of remote sensing for geomorphological

studies is immense. It allows for the rapid
assessment of large areas and for the monitoring
of changes to these areas things that would be
impossible to do using field studies alone. This is
not to say that remote sensing might one day
completely replace the requirement for on-the-
ground field work but it will continue to provide an
additional source of information for
geomorphological studies at all spatial scales.