Philippa J. Mason

• BSc, MSc, PhD
• Assoc Prof in Planetary Remote Sensing at Imperial College London

This study presents an innovative approach to automated coral reef monitoring using satellite imagery, addressing challenges in image quality assessment and correction. The method employs Principal Component Analysis (PCA) coupled with clustering for efficient image selection and quality evaluation, followed by a machine learning-based cloud remova...

Atla Regio is a large topographic rise, at the equator of Venus, considered to sit above a young mantle upwelling. Hosting several giant shield volcanoes, including Maat Mons, it is a strong candidate for recent eruptive activity. Through detailed analysis of material units and structures at Ozza, Maat and Sapas Mons, northern Dali Chasma and the s...

Cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating is an important technique for reconstructing glacial histories. Many of the most commonly applied cosmogenic nuclides are extracted from the mineral quartz, meaning sampling of felsic (silica-rich) rock is often preferred to sampling of mafic (silica-poor) rock for exposure dating studies. Fieldwork in remote regi...

Food sustainability has become a major global concern in recent years. Multiple complimentary strategies to deal with this issue have been developed; one of these approaches is regenerative farming. The identification and analysis of crop type phenology are required to achieve sustainable regenerative faming. Earth Observation (EO) data have been w...

Virtual fieldtrips enable the teaching of field geology remotely or in classroom-settings by leveraging video-game technologies. We describe the development of a virtual fieldtrip to Kinlochleven in Scotland to teach undergraduate students geological mapping skills in a structurally complex, polyphase deformed metamorphic terrain. An area of ∼4 km...

Flint Hall Farm in Godstone, Surrey, UK, is situated adjacent to the London Orbital Motorway, or M25, and contains several landslide systems which pose a significant geohazard risk to this critical infrastructure. The site has been routinely monitored by geotechnical engineers following a landslide that encroached onto the hard shoulder in December...

Rock outcrops protruding above the ice surface in Antarctica (nunataks) can provide direct geologic evidence for past ice sheet fluctuations through the measurement of concentrations of cosmogenic nuclides that accumulate in their surfaces once the rock is exposed. Felsic lithologies, which are typically pale in colour and dominated by quartz, feld...

In the framework of the comparison of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the Magellan space mission and the VISAR and VenSAR radar instruments which will be onboard the forthcoming VERITAS and EnVision missions to Venus, the problem of the disparity between the resolutions of the images arises when attempting to define a test statistic wit...

One of the key questions for Venus remains whether it is volcanically active today, and if it is what the volcanism and resurfacing rate is. In the next decade, we will have extensive new data for the surface of Venus from the upcoming accepted and potential missions to Venus – NASA’s DAVINCI (Garvin et al. 2022) and VERITAS (Smrekar et al. 2022) m...

Annual meteorological variations and the impact of climate change in recent years impacted on agricultural production and distribution. Since wheat is a main food resource and the most widely grown crop in the world, it is essential to ensure the sustainability of its production. Therefore, accurate wheat mapping is essential for agricultural produ...

Several missions to Venus have been recently selected for launch, opening a new era for the exploration of the planet. One of the key questions that the future missions need to address is whether Venus is presentlyvolcanically active. Studying areas of active volcanism and tectonism on Venus is crucial to reveal clues about the geologic past of the...

A database containing ca 27000 records of Quaternary lithostratigraphy extracted from ca 5800 individual boreholes drilled to a variety of depths, has been compiled from information contained in logs recorded and held by British Geological Survey (BGS) and from the Crossrail (CR) project. After ‘cleaning’ and quality assessment the raw borehole log...

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is an active remote sensing technique that typically utilises satellite data to quantify Earth surface and structural deformation. Drone InSAR should provide improved spatial-temporal data resolutions and operational flexibility. This necessitates the development of custom radar hardware for drone de...

Evidence for the timing and pace of past grounding line retreat of the Thwaites Glacier system in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE) of Antarctica provides constraints for models that are used to predict the future trajectory of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Existing cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure ages suggest that Pope Glacier, a former...

EnVision was selected as ESA's 5th Medium-class mission in the Agency's Cosmic Vision plan, targeting a launch in the early 2030s. EnVision's overarching science questions are to explore the full range of geoscientific processes operating on Venus. It will investigate Venus from its inner core to its atmosphere at an unprecedented scale of resoluti...

Volcán de Colima is a highly active stratovolcano in western Mexico which presents a significant hazard to over 300,000 people who live within ca 40 km of the volcano. Due to its persistent activity, the volcano is actively monitored and researched, and understanding the patterns of behaviour is vital to accurate hazard assessment. Sentinel-1 SAR i...

The benefits of InSAR to the civil engineering industry have been demonstrated on many occasions, however there is still a limited uptake by end-users, due to perceived differences between data providers and uncertainty around how to interpret results. This paper critically compares three datasets for London: Radarsat-2 (RS2) from 2011 to 2015, Ter...

Evidence for the timing and pace of past grounding line retreat of the Thwaites Glacier system in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE) of Antarctica provides constraints for models that are used to predict the future trajectory of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Existing cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure ages suggest that Pope Glacier, a former...

On June 10, 2021, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the selection of EnVision as its newest medium-class science mission. EnVision's overarching science questions are to explore the full range of geoscientific processes operating on Venus [1, 2]. It will investigate Venus from its inner core to its atmosphere at an unprecedented scale of re...

This research investigates small-scale tectonic activity in the Jiujing region in Beishan, northwest China through the application of persistent scatterer (PS) Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). PS InSAR is an effective monitoring tool in this unpopulated, arid, and unvegetated rural area, whose surface geology is dominated by a sing...

Analysis of ground movement rates along the coastline and upper sections of the Ventnor landslide complex was carried out utilizing Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar methods using Sentinel-1 SAR data from 2015 to 2019 (four years). Results were compared with rainfall data, historical ground investigation records and moni...

The Eocene Harwich Formation, underlying the Greater London (UK) area, presents many construction problems for design and location of tunnels, pipelines, and other engineering infrastructure projects. Variable deposits make up the sequence of the Harwich Formation. These include cemented fault zones, hard grounds, loose gravel and sand that, when u...

Northwestern India has been identified as a significant hotspot of groundwater depletion, with major implications for groundwater sustainability caused by excessive abstraction. We know relatively little about the detailed spatial and temporal changes in groundwater storage in this region, nor do we understand the interplay of factors controlling t...

A methodology for the remotely sensed monitoring, measurement and quantification of littoral zone platform downwearing has been developed and is demonstrated, using Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar data and analysis. The research area is a 30 km section of coast in East Sussex, UK. This area combines a range of coastal...

The Lee Tunnel was constructed as the first part of the Thames Tideway Improvement scheme, between 2010 and 2016. With tunnelling for the East section of the main Thames Tideway Tunnel, which joins the Lee Tunnel at Abbey Mills Pumping Station, beginning in early 2020, this paper investigates patterns of deformation in East London during constructi...

A series of illustrated examples is presented here to demonstrate the capabilities of ground-level monitoring using InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar). Greater London is an ideal area to demonstrate and validate measurements derived using InSAR; its continuous urban fabric and the regular acquisition of SAR images from high-resolution...

London Clay, which underlies the majority of Greater London, has a high shrink–swell potential that can result in damage to foundations and surface infrastructure due to seasonal expansion and contraction of the clay. Currently, surface movement as a result of shrink–swell is not monitored in London, meaning that the magnitude and cyclicity of thes...

The advent of cloud-based GIS tools has enabled the rapid exploration and processing of geospatial datasets. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform provides a library of algorithms and a powerful application programming interface (API) to produce flexible cloud-based applications that leverage Google’s computing infrastructure for geospatial analys...

Alluvial fans are important depositional landforms that offer valuable records of terrestrial sedimentation history if their surfaces can be mapped and dated accurately. Unfortunately, as this often depends on detailed field mapping and intensive absolute dating techniques, it can be a challenging, expensive and time-consuming exercise. In this stu...

PSInSAR is a radar remote sensing approach that offers measurements of ground deformation over large areas at sub-mm precision. The technique has significant potential for granting insight into ongoing geological processes. Data recovery in rural areas is challenging due to the highly inconsistent radar scattering behaviour exhibited by vegetated g...

The earthquake of 12 May 2008 in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, China, devastated the entire Beichuan region. Sitting at the intersection of the Yingxiu-Beichuan and Pengguan faults, the region experienced seismic intensities of VIII–XI on the Liedu scale. High seismic intensity combined with inherent geomorphological and climatic susceptibilit...

Urbanism in the Bronze-age Indus Civilisation (~4.6–3.9 thousand years before the present, ka) has been linked to water resources provided by large Himalayan river systems, although the largest concentrations of urban-scale Indus settlements are located far from extant Himalayan rivers. Here we analyse the sedimentary architecture, chronology and p...

Short-wave infrared (SWIR) reflectance spectroscopy is a quick and effective method of detecting and characterising hydrothermal alteration associated with ore deposits, and can identify not only mineral species but also changes in the major element composition of minerals. Porphyry deposits represent large accumulations of valuable metal in the Ea...

Fieldwork is a vital aspect of any geoscientist’s training and one which can never be fully replaced by classroom activities or virtual reality environments. Nevertheless, we have found that such training can be usefully augmented and enhanced by the inclusion and visualisation of imagery and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), acquired by Unmanned Ai...

This document is the EnVision Venus orbiter proposal, submitted in October 2016 in response to ESA's M5 call for Medium-size missions for its Science Programme, for launch in 2029. Why are the terrestrial planets so different? Venus should be the most Earth-like of all our planetary neighbours: its size, bulk composition and distance from the Sun a...

Venus should be the most Earth-like of all our planetary neighbours: its size, bulk composition and distance from the Sun are very similar to those of Earth. How and why did it all go wrong for Venus? What lessons can be learned about the life story of terrestrial planets in general, in this era of discovery of Earth-like exoplanets? Were the radic...

The sedimentary evolution of large fluvial fan systems is not well constrained and as a result the role of autogenic and allogenic controls on fan evolution remains poorly understood. A significant issue has been the absence of well-constrained chronologies for fan stratigraphy with which to evaluate competing models. Here, we report the results of...

Drift-filled hollows (DFHs) are a major subsurface hazard for engineering in London. They are characterized by a steeply inclined cone-shaped hollow into (sometimes through) the London Clay Formation, filled with unconsolidated fine- to coarse-grained drift and often covered by terrace gravels, making them difficult to identify at the surface. Thei...

Channel avulsion during fan development controls distribution and deposition of channel sandbodies and hence al-luvial architecture of a fan system. Variable scale spatio-temporal information of fluvial responses to past climate changes is stored in these channel sandbodies. Further these channel sandbodies form fluvial aquifers in alluvial fans an...

Channel avulsion during fan development controls distribution and deposition of channel sandbodies and hence al-luvial architecture of a fan system. Variable scale spatio-temporal information of fluvial responses to past climate changes is stored in these channel sandbodies. Further these channel sandbodies form fluvial aquifers in alluvial fans an...

The Indo–Gangetic foreland basin has some of the highest rates of groundwater extraction in the world, focused in the states of Punjab and Haryana in northwest India. Any assessment of the effects of extraction on groundwater variation requires understanding of the geometry and sedimentary architecture of the alluvial aquifers, which in turn are se...

This chapter introduces several commonly used simple image fusion techniques for multi-resolution and multi-source image integration. The RGB-IHS transformation can be used as a tool for data fusion as well as enhancement. The Brovey transform is a shortcut to image fusion, compared with the IHS image fusion technique, and is based on direct intens...

All filtering algorithms involve so-called neighbourhood processing because they are based on the relationship between neighbouring pixels rather than a single pixel in point operations. Digital filtering is useful for enhancing lineaments that may represent significant geological structures such as faults, veins or dykes. Digital filtering can be...

This chapter first describes the principles of the RGB-IHS and IHS-RGB transformations. It then discusses two de-correlation stretch techniques, both based on saturation stretch. A colour is expressed as a composite of three primaries: Red, Green and Blue, according to the tristimulus theory. High correlation generally exists among spectral bands o...

This chapter describes two industrial case studies conducted by the authors in collaboration with other co-workers. It describes the data and methodology used to enable a multi-disciplinary assessment of prospectivity for a number of economic commodities, nickel, copper and platinum group elements (PGE) in unexplored terrains of south-east Greenlan...

This chapter provides an overview of main principles and practical applications of geographic information system (GIS) construction and functionality. The earth is a three-dimensional (3D) object, roughly oblately spherical in shape, and we need to represent that 3D shape in a two-dimensional (2D) environment, on paper or on a computer screen. Sphe...

A digital image is a raster dataset or a two dimensional array of numbers but can also have a third dimension i.e. layers. The images can be electronically transmitted from or to remote locations without loss of information. The wavelengths of major spectral regions used for remote sensing are listed in this chapter. In digital image display, the t...

This chapter introduces some interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques for three-dimensional (3D) terrain representation, for quantitative measurements of terrain deformation and for the detection of random land surface changes. One major application of InSAR is to generate a digital elevation model (DEM). Satellite differential I...

This chapter concentrates on the use of raster data since its structure lends itself to terrain or surface analysis, allowing the description and quantification of terrain morphology and the extraction of surface parameters in a more uniform, regular manner than from a vector surface. It deals with the visualisation of information that has an impli...

Descriptive attributes can be described as being spatial or non-spatial, though the difference between them may be subtle and ambiguous. There are two basic types of structure used to represent the features or objects. These are raster and vector data, and as a consequence, there are different types of GIS software architecture, and different types...

Contrast enhancement, sometimes called radiometric enhancement or histogram modification, is the most basic but also the most effective technique to optimise the image contrast and brightness for visualisation or to highlight information in particular digital number (DN) ranges. Logarithmic and exponential functions are inverse operations of one an...

This chapter considers the four basic arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In multi-image point operations, arithmetic processing is sometimes the same as matrix operations, such as addition and subtraction, but sometimes totally different from and much simpler than matrix operations, such as image multiplicati...

This chapter first shows how to design and develop the most effective image processing techniques and strategy for extracting the required thematic information from images, using several case studies. With a simple and effective methodology based on the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), the study aims to identify areas subject to rapid...

This chapter examines how the terms such as decision support, uncertainty, and risk and hazard are relevant to geographical information system (GIS). A spatial decision support system (SDSS) can be thought of as a knowledge-based information system that supports decision making or, more simply, a mechanism bringing variables together to enable bett...

The branch of geographic information system (GIS) activity is sometimes referred to as advanced spatial analysis, multi-criterion evaluation or multi-criterion decision analysis (MCDA) and deals with multiple conflicting criteria that need assessment and evaluation to facilitate decision making. There are a number of different approaches to multi-c...

The sub-pixel technology has been developed to estimate and analyses image feature shifts down to subpixel magnitude for various applications. There are many techniques developed for image feature sub-pixel shift estimation in the computer vision field. This chapter focuses on one of the advanced subpixel techniques: phase correlation. It introduce...

This chapter looks at multi-variable statistical classification techniques for imagery data. Generally, statistical classification can be catalogued into two major branches: unsupervised and supervised classifications. A classification may be completed in one step, as a single pass classification or in an iterative optimisation procedure referred t...

This chapter gives an overview of the main issues and methods involved in extracting and exploiting statistical data and in getting over the problem of incomplete data. A vital tool in the understanding of data, and one that should be the first port of call, is the histogram. Understanding how the data were collected, recorded and measured point to...

Operations could be grouped on the basis of being either spatial or non-spatial. Those falling into the non-spatial category could include reclassifications or statistical operations carried out within tables. Truly spatial operations could include neighbourhood processes such as convolution filtering, or functions used to enhance the contrast of a...

This chapter first describes how the processing, interpretation and analysis of multi-source image and map data should be approached to produce thematic maps for a typical project. Following the discussion of basic strategy, a simple example of digital geological mapping, based on processing and interpretation of Landsat 7 ETM+ imagery, is presente...

This chapter discusses several teaching case studies on specific themes, using image data of south east (SE) Spain, to demonstrate remote sensing applications in earth and environmental sciences. Each case emphasizes different parts of the general strategy, but all follow the same route from image processing to information extraction and finally to...

The Principal component analysis (PCA) is based on linear algebraic matrix operations and multi-variable statistics. This chapter focuses on the principles of the PCA technique and its applications and avoid going into the mathematical details since these comprise fairly standard linear algebraic algorithms that are implemented in most image proces...

In remote sensing applications, geometric operations are mainly used for the co-registration of images of the same scene acquired by different sensor systems or at different times or from different positions, and for rectifying an image to fit a particular coordinate system (geocoding). The rubber sheet warping, based on a polynomial deformation mo...

This chapter focuses on essential image processing and geographical information system (GIS) techniques for remote sensing applications. Colours and grey tones are used as tools for image information visualisation. Digital images can be visualized in grey tones, true colour, false colour and pseudo-colour displays. The chapter introduces three imag...

River avulsions are important processes in the spatial evolution of river systems in tectonically active sedimentary basins as they govern large–scale patterns of sediment routing. However, the pattern and timing of avulsions in large river systems are poorly documented and not well understood. Here we document late Quaternary paleo–river channel c...

Unexpected ground conditions are responsible for a number of engineering problems and hazards across London. A major reason for the unexpected nature of these events is the historical proprietary approach to site investigation, which has restricted knowledge transfer and inhibited the development of a London-wide geological context. Recent changes...

Mapping the near surface alluvial and fluvial palaeochannel aquifer system of north-western India is of much concern in order to understand the groundwater dynamics and prospects of the alluvial plains of Punjab and Haryana, where groundwater resources are undergoing rapid depletion. Our study is aimed to understand the present groundwater situatio...

Mapping the near surface alluvial and fluvial palaeochannel aquifer system of north-western India is of much concern in order to understand the groundwater dynamics and prospects of the alluvial plains of Punjab and Haryana, where groundwater resources are undergoing rapid depletion. Our study is aimed to understand the present groundwater situatio...

Essential Image Processing and GIS for Remote Sensing is an accessible overview of the subject and successfully draws together these three key areas in a balanced and comprehensive manner. The book provides an overview of essential techniques and a selection of key case studies in a variety of application areas. Key concepts and ideas are introduce...

Fourier Transform: Understanding Filtering in Image Frequency Concepts of Convolution for Image Filtering Low-Pass Filters (Smoothing) High-Pass Filters (Edge Enhancement) Local Contrast Enhancement *FFT Selective and Adaptive Filtering Summary Questions

Multi-Criteria Assessment of Mineral Prospectivity, in SE Greenland Water Resource Exploration in Somalia Questions References

Introduction Software Tools GIS, Cartography and Thematic Mapping Standards, Interoperability and Metadata GIS and the Internet

Introducing Spatial Data in Representing Geographic Features How are Spatial Data Different from other Digital Data? Attributes and Measurement Scales Fundamental Data Structures Raster Data Vector Data Conversion Between Data Models and Structures Summary Questions

General Image Processing Strategy Remote-Sensing-Based GIS Projects: From Images to Thematic Mapping An Example of Thematic Mapping Based on Optimal Visualization and Interpretation of Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagery Summary Questions

Image Addition Image Subtraction (Differencing) Image Multiplication Image Division (Ratio) Index Derivation and Supervised Enhancement Standardization and Logarithmic Residual Simulated Reflectanced Summary Questions

Approaches of Statistical Classification Unsupervised Classification (Iterative Clustering) Supervised Classification Decision Rules: Dissimilarity Functions Post-Classification Processing: Smoothing and Accuracy Assessment Summary Questions

Introduction Sources and Uses of Surface Data Visualizing Surfaces Extracting Surface Parameters Summary Questions

Introduction Understanding the Data Interpolation Summary Questions