10. Remote Sensing

The availability of free satellite and other remote sensing data has created unique opportunities for the display of this data to assist geological interpretation and analysis. QGIS can display the normal satellite images, but it also has a powerful plugin, the Semi-Automatic Classification (SCP) plug-in, which can be used to source, select, download and process satellite imagery. Video tutorials are available on the web and cover a variety of remote sensing applications including land cover classification.

To download ASTER and Landsat data, you are required to register (free) at the USGS EarthExplorer portal. These registration details will be required to be entered on the SCP download/login window. Sentinel data download requires (free) registration at the ESA Sentinel data access portal. Note that it might take three or four days for your registration at ESA to become active. Recently, the search times on the ESA site via the SCP plugin have been very slow and it has been my experience lately that the USGS EarthExplorer portal is the fastest way to select and download ASTER data.

• 10.1. United States Geological Survey (USGS)
• 10.2. European Space Agency (ESA)
• 10.3. Using the Semi Automatic Classification Plugin
• 10.4. ASTER Data
• 10.5. Landsat Data
• 10.6. Sentinel 2 Data
• 10.7. Creating RGB Images
• 10.8. Principal Components Analysis (PCA)