at mapping 
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on Remote 
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6-10, 1982, 
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23-32. 
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GLOBAL SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING 
FOR ENERGY, MINERALS AND OTHER RESOURCES 
by 
FREDERICK B. HENDERSON III, PH D., PRESIDENT 
THE GEOSAT COMMITTEE, USA 
Summary and Introduction 
Civil satellite remote sensing systems developed by the U.S., 
France, Japan, and perhaps others will produce global digital 
and film data during the 1980's which will provide geological 
information valuable to the development of non-renewable 
energy/mineral and renewable resources. Economically feasible 
global coverage will depend largely upon the development of 
existing or new cooperative regional ground receiving stations 
to acquire, process, distribute and archive these data from 
cooperative satellite producing governments. At present, this 
development will depend upon the upgrading of 12 or more Landsat 
1-3 ground receiving stations to the capacity required to receive 
and process higher data rate LANDSAT 4/TM data, SPOT data, and 
Japanese ERS and other satellite data and/or the development of 
one or more addition regional cooperative station to cover the 
rest of the world. (See Figure 1) Global access to these data 
will depend upon cooperation between the ground receiving station 
countries and satellite producing countries operating under the 
international "Open Skies" policy (mutual accessibility and avail- 
ability of data on an equitable basis). 
The Landsat System 
Systematic global civilian satellite remote sensing was into- 
duced with the U.S. LANDSAT system in 1972. Designed primarily 
for agriculture, hydrology and land use planning, LANDSAT has 
demonstrated the geologic value of synoptic perspective, global 
coverage and increased geological mapping efficiency from space 
to the energy, mining and engineering industries. 
The synoptic perspective has enabled geologists to see large-scale 
geological features not obvious previously through airborne or 
ground level geological mapping programs. It has also allowed 
the geologist to integrate large regional areas geologically in 
one data base system which, in the past, had to be mosaiced from 
smaller mapping programs. 
The global coverage of satellite data allows an internally con- 
sistent digital data set to be created from systems such as LAND- 
SAT, SPOT, and proposed Japanese ERS satellite systems. By the 
use of the computer, these digital data bases can then be enhanced 
for optimal geological interpretation and information, digitally 
merged with one another for mutual enhancement and merged with 
geographic, magnetic, gravity, geochemical and other digital data 
bases. 
Finally, the increased efficiency in geological mapping stems 
from the ability to use global satellite data coverage for large 
scale regional mapping, which in turn allows for the more efficient 
and effective use of higher-cost airborne and surface ground mapping, 
179