Poster session
Humans have been successfully mapping the remotest and most inhospitable places on Earth, and the surfaces and interiors of other planets and their moons at highest resolution. However, vast areas here on Earth remain blank spots and are located in areas that have not been accessed either through field surveys, geophysical methods or remote sensing due to technical and/or financial challenges. Some of these regions are crucial, as they hold the potential to uncover important geological and habitat information to facilitate future exploration efforts and an overall better understanding of our environment.
Such extreme and remote locations are commonly associated with the ocean floor, or planetary surfaces, but these extreme worlds might also be found in hot deserts, under the ice, in high-mountain ranges, in volcanic edifices, hidden underneath dense canopy cover, or located within the near-surface crust. All such locations are prime targets for remote sensing mapping in a wider sense. The methodological and technical repertoire to investigate extreme and remote locations is thus highly specialized and despite different contexts there are commonalities not only with respect to technical mapping approaches, but also in the way how knowledge is gathered and assessed, interpreted and visualised regarding its scientific but also its economic value.
This session invites contributions to this field of geologic mapping and cartography of extreme (natural) environments with a focus on the scientific synthesis and extraction of information and knowledge.
A candidate contribution might cover, but is not limited to, topics such as:
- ocean mapping using manned and unmanned vehicles and devices,
- offshore exploration using remote sensing techniques,
- crustal investigation through drilling and sampling,
- mapping campaigns in glaciated regions
- subsurface investigation using radar techniques,
- planetary geologic and geophysical mapping,
- geologic investigation of desert environments.
The aim of this session is to bring together researchers mapping environments that are hardly accessible or not accessible at all, thus often relying on geophysical or remote sensing techniques as main source for collecting data and information. We would like to focus on geological and geophysical mapping of spots for which we have no or only very limited knowledge due to the harsh environmental conditions, and we would thus exclude areas that are inaccessible for political reasons.