THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPTICAL REMOTE SENSING TECHNOLOGY AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE ACTIVE TECTONICS RESEARCH

Remote sensing technology has brought great convenience to our understanding of the macroscopic geological features since its inception. Especially, great progress has been made in manufacturing techniques of remote sensing platforms and sensors since the mid 20th century, and a huge number of global remote sensing data have been acquired. The quality of the data has been greatly improved based on the sensor's development. This article briefly reviews the processes of development of the remote sensing technology, elaborates on several satellites' parameters which have important significance for active tectonics interpretation, such as Landsat, SPOT, QuickBird, etc., and systematically reviews the progress in optical image interpretation made with the improvement of image resolution. The paper also briefly introduces the latest optical imaging correlation techniques, the detailed geomorphological mapping techniques based high-resolution satellite images, and the perspective of application of the remote sensing technology to active tectonics research.