ABSTRACT
The history of monitoring and investigating glaciers by remote sensing techniques is basically divided into two distinct periods: before and after the International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957/1958. For more than 100 years before the IGY, remote sensing was used almost exclusively for mapping purposes and for the determination of glacier surface velocities. It was only with the massive increase in glacier investigations during the IGY that the development of new sensors during the 1950s and 1960s and the advent of space technology opened up the broad field of remote sensing techniques covering almost the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now not only geometry changes were detectable from a distance; other glaciological parameters also became the focus of remote sensing applications. These new techniques in particular are covered in more detail in other chapters of this book. The historical part focuses on the earlier history of glacier remote sensing.
