REMOTE SENSING AND GIS
The Department was established in 1976 as a unit of the Central Laboratory for Space Research (now Space Research and Technologies Institute) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Since its establishment until now, the Department has accomplished more than 60 research projects related with study of Bulgarian territory. By integrated use of aerospace (remote sensing) and ground-based (contact) data, morphostructural partitioning of the country was made; the geodynamics and neotectonics were studied; ring and lineament morphostructures of various origin were identified, bearing different ores and minerals (ores, minerals, oil, fresh water etc.). During the 70-ies of the last century, jointly with Russian scientists, methods for visual-instrumental deciphering of aerospace scanner images were designed and approbated. Spectral signatures were established and the information potential of multi-zone airplane images for various land cover types was determined. Methods for complex landscape–geochemical and remote sensing of technogenically loaded regions were developed. These methods were approbated on the territory of the Kurdzhali Lead-Zinc Works, the Devnya Industrial Complex, the City of Sofia, and the Kremikovtzi Metallurgical Works.
