INTRODUCTION 
The Concept and Definition of Derelict Land. 
The study of derelict land is one which has involved research workers 
from many disciplines as is shown "by the enormous variety of journals, 
hooks and reports in which such work is reported. Among others, for 
example, Rodin (1973) has looked at engineering problems, Crampton (19^T) 
has considered soil development, White (1959) has examined revegetation, 
and James (1970) has introduced planning into the subject. In addition, 
several multidisciplinary works have combined the experiences of several 
workers and varying situations (Hilton (19^7)» University of Newcastle 
( 1971 ), ( 1972 )). 
Studies such as these involve some concept and definition of derelict 
land even if this is not explicitly stated, but where definitions have 
been given there has been a lack of uniformity and universal acceptance 
as to the true nature of ’’derelict land”. This has been attributed to a 
.confusion of the two fundamental ideas expressed in the concept of 
derelict land (Gibson, 1973)« The first of these, that of aesthetics where 
sites are called ’derelict’ if they are visually offensive, has produced 
problems arising from the subjective evaluation of landscape quality. The 
other idea of abandonment and economic disuse has produced problems of 
defining ’disuse 1 particularly when, for example, sites not in use for 
industrial purposes have been taken over for unplanned recreational 
activities. Where definitions have included both of these ideas, the 
problems have become more acute, leading to difficulties in the application 
of such definitions to all aspects of derelict land study. 
In an attempt to reduce the problems the following terms have been 
derived by the author for the current work: 
’Derelict landscape’, including land, installations and buildings, ’is 
that landscape which through the activity and subsequent neglect of 
man has become an unutilized land resource, and as such will remain 
so until subjected to some form of treatment’. 
’Actively disfigured landscape is that landscape which because of the 
activity of man causes visual intrusion, and as such will remain so 
until subjected to seme form of treatment.’ 
These two terms are collectively referred to as the ’spoiled landscape’, 
thus including the two ideas expressed above. 
Aerial Survey and Spoiled Landscape Studies. 
Aerial photographs have been in use for several years for the 
quantitative, i.e. photogrammetric,* study of the spoiled landscape parti 
cularly in the mining areas of countries such as West Germany and South 
Africa (see Belling I 966 for example), and the advantages over field 
survey are well known. The use of photographs for qualitative information, 
however, has been largely ignored. This is probably because in many 
countries, such as the United States, there has been no perceived need, 
despite the awareness of the problem (U.S. Dept of Interior, 19^7) "the 
concern about reclamation (Palkie and Saperstein 1970)* The current 
research into the applicability of Skylab photography to surface mining