This manuscript presents a review on the application of a remote sensing technique (terrestrial laser scanning, TLS) to a well-known topic (rock slope characterization and monitoring). Although the number of publications on the use of TLS in rock slope studies has rapidly increased in the last 5-10 years, little effort has been made to review the key developments, establish a code of best practice and unify future research approaches. The acquisition of dense 3D terrain information with high accuracy, high data acquisition speed and increasingly efficient post-processing workflows is helping to better quantify key parameters of rock slope instabilities across spatial and temporal scales ranging from cubic decimetres to millions of cubic metres and from hours to years, respectively. Key insights into the use of TLS in rock slope investigations include: (a) the capability of remotely obtaining the orientation of slope discontinuities, which constitutes a great step forward in rock mechanics; (b) the possibility to monitor rock slopes which allows not only the accurate quantification of rockfall rates across wide areas but also the spatio-temporal modelling of rock slope deformation with an unprecedented level of detail. Studying rock slopes using TLS presents a series of key challenges, from accounting for the fractal character of rock surface to detecting the precursory deformation that may help in the future prediction of rock failures. Further investigation on the development of new algorithms for point cloud filtering, segmentation, feature extraction, deformation tracking and change detection will significantly improve our understanding on how rock slopes behave and evolve. Perspectives include the use of new 3D sensing devices and the adaptation of techniques and methods recently developed in other disciplines as robotics and 3D computer-vision to rock slope instabilities research.

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Abstract. We present an automated terrestrial laser scanning (ATLS) system with automatic near-real-time change detection processing. The ATLS system was tested on the Séchilienne landslide in France for a 6-week period with data collected at 30 min intervals. The purpose of developing the system was to fill the gap of high-temporal-resolution TLS monitoring studies of earth surface processes and to offer a cost-effective, light, portable alternative to ground-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (GB-InSAR) deformation monitoring. During the study, we detected the flux of talus, displacement of the landslide and pre-failure deformation of discrete rockfall events. Additionally, we found the ATLS system to be an effective tool in monitoring landslide and rockfall processes despite missing points due to poor atmospheric conditions or rainfall. Furthermore, such a system has the potential to help us better understand a wide variety of slope processes at high levels of temporal detail.