eyesight and normal cameras and film. Virtually all of them make use of sensors that scan Earth and record surface information electronically. In the lingo of remote sensing, you have aerial photographs (terminology left over from using film) and non-photographic images. Several image-types are widely used:
Radar imaging: In radar imaging, a sensor emits continuous beams of energy that bounce off Earth and return to the sensor, which records them. Because the emitted beams travel at a known and uniform speed, the time that it takes them to make the round trip is a function of the elevations of the locations where the beams reflect. For example, a beam that bounces off a mountaintop takes less time to return to the sensor than one that reflects off a valley bottom. This information can be used to produce detailed images of terrain and very exact topographic maps.Radar beams can penetrate clouds and fog with no loss of strength. Thus, radar imaging is extremely useful for monitoring and mapping Earth’s surface in regions where atmospheric characteristics inhibit aerial photography (such as characteristically cloudy equatorial areas). It may also be used at night to the same effect as day. The same, of course, cannot be said of regular film.
Thermal imaging: Thermal scanners (a form of infrared imaging) record heat differences on Earth’s surface. This is particularly useful for mapping ocean surface currents (whose temperature variations have a major effect on weather and climate) as well as for identifying and mapping different kinds of pollution. It has also proved very useful in mapping and monitoring forest fires and other fire-related phenomena, especially in situations in which smoke prohibits analysis by means of standard photography.
LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging): This has really come into its own over the past two decades, primarily for its ability to make very high-resolution maps. Using laser pulses, the system has helped us better map ocean bottoms (bathymetry) and helped archaeologists find sites under vegetative cover. LiDAR highlights that mapping is never really done. Sure, there are always new things to map but as LiDAR shows us there are always new, better, and increasingly more accurate ways to do so.
Whether we are gathering photographic or imaged information, there’s one other game changer in this whole process: the UAV. The what? An unmanned aerial vehicle, that’s what. You probably call it a drone. While many people are playing with these and snapping pictures over their backyards, we know better. They are really a new army of remote sensors. Put one of those UAVs into the hands of a credentialed pilot with a powerful LiDAR sensor on board and look out. We can gather Earth data in really inaccessible places and make a lot of change for the better as was done in my state, South Carolina, by monitoring old agricultural dams that can cause big problems downstream if they fail.
So maybe the future is plastics. And metal. And glass. And circuitry. All the things that collectively make up the computing, sensing, and locational hardware behind GIS, GPS, and remote sensing.
Making Maps Yourself!
Just about anyone can make a map these days. There are a number of online software options that allow you to drop points on a map or make full-blown presentations of stories atop a base map of remotely sensed imagery.
But there’s still one big problem: These new mapmakers have not read this book. As a result, they use the wrong symbols, don’t process their data for choropleth maps, and use crazy color schemes that do everything but illuminate. Perhaps worse than having no map at all is one that is flat out misleading. That is, of course, only a problem if you want your maps to be truthful. Not everyone does. History is replete with examples: from World War Two Nazi maps (propaganda to show how much lebensraum (living space) Germany needed, thus a reason to conquer Europe) to Cold War Russians “hiding” cities by moving them from one map to another over time (why? To avoid American missiles.).
Be excited about your ability to map, but take care, too.
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