The revolution in how we survey and image the surface of the Earth has had profound impacts on the geosciences. This shouldn’t be a shock to anyone as that’s what geoscientists do — study the Earth — and as we get more and better data on the planet and its surface, the better our understanding will become (and the more questions we can ask). Few technological leaps have been more important to geosciences than satellite imaging of the Earth.
That is more than just taking cool pictures of the planet, but also collecting location and elevation data of the surface … and being able to do so in sub-centimeter precision and repeatedly over intervals of days (or less). Combine that with land-based tools like LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), and suddenly we can notice very small changes in the Earth’s surface. Dump all this data in a geographic information system (GIS) and we can really start picking apart almost every up and down and slide and whatever comes along. Add high-powering computing to model the physical processes and the geosciences of 2018 would look like straight up science fiction to a geologist from 1975.
