Linking life and landscape with remote sensing
The surface of our planet is unique among known planetary bodies in that it supports life. From plants to microbes, this life can modulate the creation, transport, and deposition of sediment and therefore affect the evolution of the landscapes it inhabits. In this chapter, we explore remote sensing techniques that can quantify features of living organisms, which may link to geomorphic processes. Our focus is on vegetation. We review some of the many mechanisms through which geomorphology and vegetation are linked, and their incorporation into geomorphic models, and explore how lidar, radar, optical, multispectral remote sensing, and even airborne geophysical methods can be used to quantify relevant properties such as biomass, vegetation density, and organic carbon.
