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Land Surface Roughness

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Remote Sensing

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

  • 287 Accesses

Synonyms

Microrelief; Microtopography

Definition

Surface roughness is usually defined at the human scales of centimeter to a few meter; larger scales are usually considered as topography. Relief at these scales is familiar to field geologists working at the outcrop scale and those interested in interpretation of landforms and earth-surface processes that form and modify them.

Scientific usefulness

One important surficial geologic process is aeolian erosion, transport, and deposition of sediments. The shear stress wind produces at the earth's surface is strongly affected by the surface roughness. The aerodynamic roughness parameter, z0, depends on the wind speed profile as a function of height about the ground (Greeley et al., 1997). This parameter is used by geologists interested in aeolian processes as well as climatologists seeking to quantify atmospheric coupling with the solid earth.

Windblown dust and sand can also modify surface roughness by mantling and attenuating surface...

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Acknowledgment

This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Thomas Farr

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  1. Thomas Farr
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Farr .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA

    Eni G. Njoku

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Farr, T. (2014). Land Surface Roughness. In: Njoku, E.G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Remote Sensing. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-36699-9_76

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