| Remote sensing offers major contributions to the understanding of northern landscapes and vegetation patterns. Recently available instrumentation and analytic techniques, yielding new types of data and new approaches to longstanding problems, are demonstrated in this analysis of terrain conditions and vegetation distributions in the Caribou Hills, N.W.T. The analysis of landform was based on field data, image interpretation and photogrammetric elevation model data. Slope angles and aspects were computed and trend surfaces, residuals and contour maps produced for model areas. Within sampled areas, surface roughness, the degree of dissection and the apparent dominance of either fluvial or mass wasting processes were found to be controlled by slope aspect, snow drifting patterns and the nival melt schedule. Patterns of active layer depth and details of surface materials, morphology and processes were derived from stereoscopic analysis of photographs through linkages with plant associations. Twelve plant associations, defined by field survey, provided a basis for differentiating photographic signatures and vegetation mapping classes. The character and separability of the spectral signatures were reviewed using ratioed and clustered optical film density data. The major advantages of remote sensing as an analytic tool were demonstrated. Remote sensing provides a vast array of geographic data and a unique synthesis of terrain and vegetation conditions offering the researcher key information that is otherwise unavailable. |
