Remote sensing in geomorphology / Дистанционное зондирование в геоморфологии

When on November 21, 1783 the Marquis d’Arlandes and Pilatre de Rosier made a half hour voyage in their Montgolfier balloon near Paris and thus became the first aeronauts, few would have guessed that this achievement was not only the humble beginning of man’s conquest of aerospace but triggered off also a sequence of events which ultimately provided a powerful tool for the study of landforms and terrain conditions of all sorts. The potentials of aerospace observations have evolved with the technological progress of data recording and processing systems and of tire skyborne vehicles involved (Dolfuss, 1972; Quick, 1964; Parry, 1972).
In the beginning applications were limited to visual observation only. Airborne platforms became of considerably greater interest about three quarters of a century later, when the discovery of photographic processes— based on the fact th5t certain chemical compounds are sensitive to light—and the invention of cameras rendered it possible to obtain photographic images of the terrain. The Parisian photographer and balloonist F.F. Tourna-chon, better known as Nadar (Fig. 1.1), in 1858 succeeded in making the first aerial photographs. After developing the plate tire houses of the small village of Petit Bicetre could clearly be distinguished. The first aerial photograph of the United States is a view of Boston dating from 1860, and in Russia pictures were taken in 1886 from a free balloon over the fortresses of Kronstadt and Petersburg. <...>