Earth resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 579 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economical analysis

Earth resources: A continuing bibliography, issue 46

This bibliography lists 467 reports, articles and other documents introdcued into the NASA scientific and technical information system between April 1 and June 30, 1985. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental cultural resources geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economical analysis

Quarterly literature review of the remote sensing of natural resources

The Technology Application Center reviewed abstracted literature sources, and selected document data and data gathering techniques which were performed or obtained remotely from space, aircraft or groundbased stations. All of the documentation was related to remote sensing sensors or the remote sensing of the natural resources. Sensors were primarily those operating within the 10 to the minus 8 power to 1 meter wavelength band. Included are NASA Tech Briefs, ARAC Industrial Applications Reports, U.S. Navy Technical Reports, U.S. Patent reports, and other technical articles and reports

Improving contrast for the detection of archaeological vegetation marks using optical remote sensing techniques.

Airborne archaeological prospection in arable crops relies on detecting features using contrasts in the growth of the overlying crop as a proxy. This is possible because thecomposition of the soil in the features differs from the unmodified subsoil, and this exerts influence on the state of the crop. This influence is expressed as changes in crop canopydensity, structure, and in periods of resource constraint, variations in vegetation stressand vigour. These contrasts are dynamic, and vary temporally with local weather, andspatially with variations in drift geology and land use. This means that the archaeologicalfeatures have no unique spectral signature usable for classification. Rather, contrast isexpressed as relative, local variation in the crop. The extent to which the features are detectable using a particular technique is dependanton the strength of the contrast and the ability of the sensor to resolve it. Current practicerelies heavily on photography in the visible spectrum, but other sensors and processingtechniques have the potential to improve our ability to resolve subtle contrasts. This isimportant, as it affords the opportunity to extend the detection temporally and in soiltypes not normally considered conducive to detection. This work uses multi-temporal spectro-radiometry and ground-based survey to studycontrast at two sites in southern England. From these measurements leaf area index, vegetationindices, the red-edge position, chlorophyll fluorescence and continuum removalof foliar absorption features were derived and compared to evaluate contrast. The knowledgegained from the ground-based surveys was used to inform the analysis of the airbornesurveys. This included the application of vegetation indices to RGB cameras, theuse of multi-temporal and full-waveform LiDAR to detect biomass variations, and the useof various techniques with hyper-spectral imaging spectroscopy. These methods providea demonstrable improvement in contrast, particularly in methods sensitve to chlorophyllfluorescence, which afford the opportunity to record transient and short term contraststhat are not resolved by other sensors

Earth Resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes, issue 19

This bibliography lists 337 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System between July 1 and September 30, 1978. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economic analysis

Literature review of the remote sensing of natural resources

Abstracts of 596 documents related to remote sensors or the remote sensing of natural resources by satellite, aircraft, or ground-based stations are presented. Topics covered include general theory, geology and hydrology, agriculture and forestry, marine sciences, urban land use, and instrumentation. Recent documents not yet cited in any of the seven information sources used for the compilation are summarized. An author/key word index is provided

A very high-resolution analysis of the influence of bank roughness on the rate of river bank erosion processes

River bank erosion is a significant contributor of sediment to our rivers and a changing climate poses new challenges for our understanding of these erosion processes. This study made use of very-high resolution terrestrial laser scanning and meteorological and flow observation data to attempt to identify the relative contributions of different erosion processes on a stretch of the River Arrow in Warwickshire, UK. Over 24 months, five sections of river bank were scanned seven times each, creating 6 time periods of change for the analysis. It was possible to identify subaerial erosion as the dominant erosion processes across all five of the study banks, contributing up to 98% of the erosion recorded. Through a series of linear regression models it was possible to identify maximum discharge, mean stage, maximum stage and peaks above the Q10 stage as statistically significant contributors to erosion, explaining 36.7% of the volume of erosion per m2 per year across the whole bank face. The most interesting feature of these models was the direction of the model coefficients, with most of the flow variables exhibiting negative coefficients, suggesting that as flow increases erosion decreases. High flows were not generating erosion and were inhibiting other erosional processes, in particular that of subaerial erosion which was the most significant contributor to bank change during the study period. Meteorological variables were also modelled via linear regression and maximum temperature, total rainfall and average rainfall were identified as significant contributors to erosion, but those models still only explained 19.7% of the subaerial erosion above the Q10 level and 23.7% of the total erosion volume. In addition to linear models, a principal components analysis was also carried out to try to explain more of the erosion. The PCA model explained an additional 7% of the erosion above the Q10 level using two components spanning the full range of meteorological variables calculated, with component one comprising positive contributions from cold hours, frost days, freeze thaw cycles, total rainfall, wetting and drying cycles, wet days and rain hours and negative contributions from mean and minimum temperature. Component two comprised positive contributions from maximum temperature and hot hours but negative contributions from average rainfall. The final part of this study sought to identify whether roughness had a significant effect on fluvial erosion. Roughness was calculated at three different scales - 0.5m, 0.25m, and 0.03m - and the effect of roughness on erosion was modelled using a series of further linear regression models. These models explained between 3.2% and 89.3% of the erosion value, when local erosion and local roughness were controlled for. Again, the coefficient values in these models were interesting, with greater roughness leading to greater erosion in the majority of cases for all three roughness scales. Interaction models, that measure the effect of multiple levels of independent variables on the relationship between another independent variable and the dependent variable, were undertaken to try to understand the combined effect of roughness at different scales. Fewer of these models were statistically significant - only 16 out of 30 - but the significant models frequently demonstrated that an increase in the roughness at the 0.5m scale resulted in a weakening of the relationship between roughness at the 0.03m scale and erosion. However, there still remain some inconsistencies cross the interaction models that require further analysis. Overall, the research was deemed successful, shedding new light on the process of bank erosion and identifying numerous opportunities for further research. In particular, more temporally dense measurements of erosion are needed to better understand the relationship between flow events and erosion, as well as attempting to respond more directly to high flow events by scanning before and after high flows to more directly attribute erosion directly to specific flow events

Solid Earth science in the 1990s. Volume 3: Measurement techniques and technology

Reports are contained from the NASA Workshop on Solid Earth Science in the 1990s. The techniques and technologies needed to address the program objectives are discussed. The Measurement Technique and Technology Panel identified (1) candidate measurement systems for each of the measurements required for the Solid Earth Science Program that would fall under the NASA purview; (2) the capabilities and limitations of each technique; and (3) the developments necessary for each technique to meet the science panel requirements. In nearly all cases, current technology or a development path with existing technology was identified as capable of meeting the requirements of the science panels. These technologies and development paths are discussed