MULTIFRACTAL NATURE OF GEOPHYSICAL FIELDS DETERMINED BY AEROSPACE METHODS

The paper considers a new approach to the analysis of the spatial stru cture of geophysical fields from remote sensing measurements. The appr oach is based on the use of fractal geometry to study chaotic spatial structures. It is shown that a geophysical field measured with uniform spatial resolution may be interpreted as a self-affine fractal set wi th a local and a global dimension. The fractal nature of the fields fo llows from the scale invariant dependencies of local measurements extr apolated to a higher spatial level, and provides the basis for an adeq uate description of their micro- and macroscopic properties. Studies w ere based on the use of Kosmos 1939, Almaz SAR and Landsat TM satellit e images together with aircraft optical, microwave, radar and lidar me asurements.