Early days

Within the first few weeks, something which intrigued me was the inherent human fascination with observation and early efforts to remotely sense through the motivation of curiosity, including Gaspard Felix Tournachon’s photo in a balloon above Paris in 1858 (Krule, 2014). Humans by nature are curious but I found it particularly interesting to see the development of remote sensing from Tournachon’s early efforts to Sentinel-1 mapping the impacts of Hurricane Michael just hours after it had struck this month (Adkins, 2018). When following the development of remote sensing, it is an interesting question to pose: where will it go next?

As a result of this curiosity, I did further reading and realised the scope of remote sensing, with Tatem et al (2008) describing how multispectral measurements have enhanced land-cover assessments and provided a method by which objective measurements of change over time can be performed. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) highlight how remote sensing cannot just be used from an environmental perspective, but to map the growth of a city to inform policy makers for enhanced social progress (USGS, 2018). Thus, it is shown that remote sensing offers more than just satellite images. Arguably, remote sensing’s interdisciplinary applications makes it the fundamental base for contemporary geography and research can be strengthened using remotely sensed images. It is evident that remote sensing has provided ‘major advances’ for understanding the Earth system due to satellite’s unequalled spatio-temporal coverage and quantitative information.

Figure 1: Self portrait of Gaspard Felix Tournachon (International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum, unknown).

However, this course so far has been challenging when evaluating the multispectral features of the Earth’s surface. I found spectral signatures difficult to get my head around as it was new content and physics was never really my strong point (something which I’m working on!). Once I got to grips with the basic principles of reflectance, absorbance and transmittance, I found it rewarding to be able to identify a material based on its signature and I look forward to using this knowledge in my coursework.