Page 26 RAIN Nov 1975 The beautiful jewels of cities at night, of sunset and moonrise on the clouds, of pastel deserts, snow-capped mountains with glaciers and emerald pools of iceformed waters. The history of the life of our planet in the faint traces of vast floods, river-cut gorges and canyons, layering of rock, the building and destroying of soil and vegetation. The devastation we have brought to places we have loved, and the'painful and joyful making of things we cherish. All give new dimension and images to the events that are so closely interwoven with our lives that we cannot conceive of their total nature and form. Seeing from above or afar, and the maps such visions create that guide our future actions and dreams, gives new dimensions to our consciousness of ourselves, our actions and our planet. • Natural Regions of the U.S. & Canada, by Charles 8. Hunt, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1974, $15.9S Our personalities and our cultures are strongly influenced by the geology, climate, landforms, soils, vegetation and resources that are specific to different regions, and a tracing of geomorphic regions reflects closely the boundaries of our regional cultures, dreams and ways of life. Natural Regions gives a detailed explanation of the forces forming and transforming our various regions and the characteristics and history of the different regions. Heavily illustrated with maps, charts and-drawings. The Explorers Ltd. Source Book, ed. by Alwyn T. Perrin, Harp~r & Row, $4.95. Contains an outstanding section on maps in addition to a wealth of other information on wilderness travel and living, navigation, ballooning, caving, survival, etc. Government sources of maps-U.S. and foreign. Geological survey maps. Navigational charts-worldwide. Sources of old maps & surveys. Foreign and domestic road and street maps. Plastic relief maps. Moon and star maps. Aerial photographs. Weather maps. Directories of all U.S. government map sources, and much more. Powers of Ten Office of Charles Eames 910 Washington Blvd. Venice, CA 90291 $125.00 film purchase. Latest status uncertain; awhile back it was unavailable. Check your local library. A cosmic zoom from here to outer (or out to inner) space. THE WORLD Interpretation ofAerial Photographs, 2nd Ed., T. Eugene Avery, $10.9S, Burgess Publishing Co. 426 South 6th St. Minneapolis, MN 5541S Thorough coverage of aerial photography -processes used, techniques of interpretation, sources of aerial photographs and maps; uses in agriculture, fores!ry, landforms and geology, engineering, urbanindustrial patterns, and air intelligence and military target analysis. A goldmine of interesting information. Photo-Atlas ofthe United States Photo-Geographic International Ward-Ritchie Press Pasadena, CA $5.95 (?). First complete photographic atlas of U.S. using satellite photography. Color enlargements of 10 major cities. A valuable concept, but hopefully will be followed by photo atlases with greater sensitivity. Little range of scale is given-no sense of U.S. as part of globe, of detailed close-in enlargements of various regions, of earth and weather, of the real beauty of color that has made every air traveler fall in love with the beauty of our planet. Scale used corresponds more to traditional political boundaries than either to geo-cultural regions or ability to clearly reveal landform patterns. The Third Planet-Terrestrial Geology in Orbital Photographs, Paul D. Lowman, Jr., $32.00 (plus $10 airmail) from: Weldlugbild Verlag Reinhold A. Muller Feldmeilen Zurich, Switzerland Weltraumblider, J. Bodechtel & H. G. Gierloff-Emden, $15.00 (plus $7.20 airmail) from: Paul List Verlag KG, Munchen SV Sudwest Munchen 33 Postfach, 780 Germany The Earth From Space, J. Bodechtel & H. G. Gierloff-Emden, $16.9S from: Arco Pubiishing Co., Inc. 219 Park Avenue S. New York, NY 10003 Planetary systems of weather, water, rock and life becomes much more comprehensible when viewed from above. These collections of photography from space flights are both beautiful and highly informative. Weltraumbilder is the most recent and comprehensive. All three form useful tools for understanding, politics, geology, weather, navigation. Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps, Kees Boeke, John Day Books, $4.50. From a fly on a hand out into galaxies and then back into the hand and down to inner space, which of course might as well be outerspace. There's also a movie I wasn't able to find a reference for. Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon, Dover Books, $2.50. A science fiction of an account of a journey through space (without the usual federal subsidy oi aircraft). Rock, Time & Landforms, Jerome Wyckoff, Harper & Row, 1966, $8.95. The natural forces and processes that create and change our landscapes-pre- ' sented vividly yet accurately. "To become more aware of landscapes is to gain a wider consciousness of life; it is to share, in a sense, the physical existence of the planet itself." Good perspectives from which to develop an enduring society. Less technical than Natural Regions, with vivid photographic illustrations. The EROS Data Center Sioux Falls, SD S7198 The ERTS (now called Land-Sat) satellites launched in 1972 and 197 3 have photographed nearly the entire globe from an altitude of about 900 kilometers. The ground resolution of LandSat images is about 180-275 meters, compared with Gemini and Apollo from 70 to 125 meters, Skylab's multi-spectral camera at 40 to 100 meters; Skylab's earth terrain camera, 10 to 40 meters; high altitude aircraft cameras 4 to 10 meters, and military satellite cameras, which can obtain a resolution better than 3 meters. In order to make use of the images effectively, it is recommended you have access to a computer-otherwise it's kind of like the proverbial bird that sings too high to hear. The data produced is staggering. "It will produce 15 million bits of information per second, the equivalent of an Encyclopedia Britannica every couple of minutes." The ordering of Land-Sat images is complicated. We recommend you write for details. (High flight aircraft-U-2and Skylab images also available). In Oregon, for data on the Northwest, contact the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications Lab, Oregon State U., Corvallis, OR 97331, 503754-3056.
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