Interpretation of Multispectral Aerospace Images: Methodology and Results

Summary

This atlas presents a systematic account of the methods and results of interpreting multispectral aerial and space photographs developed through cooperation between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic under the Interkosmos programme. Its principal source materials were more than 2,500 multispectral photographs acquired during the 1976 Raduga experiment by cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 22 using the jointly developed MKF-6 camera. Additional imagery was collected from laboratory aircraft and the Salyut 6 orbital station, while the MSP-4 multispectral projector enabled the production of high-quality colour composites. The work evaluates how individual spectral bands and their combinations improve the reliability of feature identification, thematic mapping, resource assessment, environmental monitoring, and territorial planning. It also outlines an integrated interpretation framework ranging from visual analysis of colour composites and band series to instrumental measurement, digital enhancement, and automated classification. Geographically diverse case studies include the shallow northeastern Caspian Sea, southern and northern Baikal regions, Central Yakutia, the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, southeastern Kazakhstan, Central Asia, the Pamir-Alai mountains, and northern and central parts of the GDR. The applications encompass geological structure, tectonics, geomorphology, glaciation, permafrost, hydrology, river sediment discharge, marine bottom deposits, aquatic and terrestrial vegetation, soils, landscapes, agricultural crops, land use, settlement systems, and anthropogenic landscape change. Across these fields, interpretation relies on spectral tone and colour together with shape, texture, pattern, spatial context, and relationships among objects. Comparative analysis of bands helps distinguish features that are ambiguous in a single image, while representative field profiles and reference sites permit interpretation results to be extrapolated to areas with similar environmental and land-use conditions. The detailed study of Lake Süsser See demonstrates the practical value of this approach. Orange and red imagery clearly delineates agricultural parcels, whereas green, red to near-infrared, and near-infrared bands improve discrimination between settled and unsettled land, vegetation classes, moisture conditions, and soils. Visual and digital analyses distinguish winter and spring wheat, maize, fodder crops, alfalfa, peas, fallow fields, orchards of different ages, meadows, settlements, recreational facilities, roads, wetlands, reed beds, abandoned plantations, and water bodies. Image structure also reveals cultivation practices, harvesting and reseeding, former crops, machinery traces, field boundaries, road-surface changes, and erosion-prone or unused slopes; high-frequency filtering enhances linear features. The resulting maps provide a synoptic record of land use at the time of acquisition and a basis for management recommendations. These include controlling soil erosion in orchards, regulating groundwater in former lake basins, protecting lake water quality, guiding transport and recreation development, and conserving dry steppes, meadow steppes, saline meadows, and wetlands. Overall, the atlas demonstrates that multispectral aerospace photography is a versatile and efficient bridge between Earth-science investigation, thematic cartography, renewable resource inventories, environmental protection, and operational regional planning.