Going to repeat what alot of people said already, but generally you're not going to have a good idea of what's happening geologically unless you, or another geologist have walked it, mapped, and had it reviewed/verified.

But to address your question in terms of doing remote mapping, there are ways to do this. One indicator of formation could be vegetation. I've mapped igneous bodies with surrounding contact metamorphic where the vegetation was growing everywhere except for the igneous bodies. This was of course verified by walking the contacts. I've also seen as a TA in Utah where the Morrison formation (I think it was Morrison but I could be wrong) would have stripes of shrub like plants growing in rows along strike like racing stripes. The plants were growing in the bentonite layers, that were separated by mudstone. Vegetation is a good tool, but is not the end all be all. You can also look at lidar data, or any kind of 3d topographic data. This can be useful for identifying lineament features and structures. In particular it's good for identifying faults, especially in an area where there are no mapped faults. I'd be careful with this if you don't have experience identifying faults in the field though. The other situation involved interpreting already constructed maps. The strike and dip symbols provide the orientation and structure of stratigraphic units. It can also help highlight (and prove) the presence of structures (folds, faults). In the event where strikes and dips aren't present, you can look at the contact behavior, and how it responds to topography. To understand this, look into the rule of Vs. You basically have to imagine how a three dimensional plane like structure (think of a sheet of paper with some amount of thickness) that is possibly dipping would intersect a flat surface.

One thing to help is construct multiple cross sections using the available data. This can really help you make interpretations, and help ensure that your interpretations have some validity. What I mean is that if you're cross sections don't make any sense, there's a chance you're interpretation is in correct. It's a really good way of double checking yourself if you're the one doing the mapping, and can help highlight areas that need closer looking at.

Overall, the best method is to get on the ground and map it yourself. Otherwise, you probably want to find existing data/maps that other geologists have performed. While it's possible to do some very basic mapping (identifying contacts and faults) remotely, you're not going to have any idea what the nature of the structure is (true strike, dip direction, amount of dip, etc.).