Nature/Scenics: Europe; October 10, 1994 Mende, France - Temperate Forest Monitoring - Image by NASA |
This page contains an X-band seasonal
image of the central part of Lozere Departement situated south
of the Massif Central in France. The image is 10 kilometers by
25 kilometers (6 miles by 15.5 miles) and is centered at approximately
44.3 degrees north latitude and 3 degrees east longitude. This
image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic
Aperture Radar aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on April 15,
1994 and on October 6, 1994. The image channels have the following
color assignments: red was acquired in April; green was acquired
in October; and blue is the ratio of the two data sets combined.
Seasonal differences in the vegetation are visible in pink, which
are heaths growing in the spring. This research area features
two large limestone plateaus cut by the famous Gorges du Tarn,
standing in parallel with the granite mountain range known as
the Cevennes Mountains nearby. Land-use consists mainly of grasslands,
heaths and forests. Forest types seen in the images are Austrian
pines, Scots pines, spruce, fir and beech trees. Most forests
were planted at the end of the 19th century through a national
reforestation program aimed at reducing the strong erosion risks
in these areas. This program was so successful that today the
forests are exploited for forest pulpwood and sawlogs, but also
remain protected as conservation regions. The study being performed
in this area will assess the potential of spaceborne radar remote
sensing for temperate forest type mapping and forest resource
monitoring. The combination of X-band SAR data with lower frequency
data (such as the SIR-C L-band data) allows scientists to distinguish
forest tree species and biomass, or areas of ground vegetation.
The lessons learned from the radar images of these controlled
forest regions can be applied to larger areas and naturally grown
forests to help ecologists protect and maintain them. The SIR-C/X-SAR
images will be investigated by scientists from the remote sensing
laboratory Cemagref in Montpellier and the National Foresty Board
in Mende, France.
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Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar
(SIR-C/X-SAR) is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. The radars
illuminate Earth with microwaves, allowing detailed observations
at any time, regardless of weather or sunlight conditions. SIR-C/X-SAR
uses three microwave wavelengths: L-band (24 cm), C-band (6 cm)
and X-band (3 cm). The multi-frequency data will be used by the
international scientific community to better understand the global
environment and how it is changing. The SIR-C/X-SAR data, complemented
by aircraft and ground studies, will give scientists clearer insights
into those environmental changes which are caused by nature and
those changes which are induced by human activity. SIR-C was developed
by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. X-SAR was developed by the
Dornier and Alenia Spazio companies for the German space agency,
Deutsche Agentur fuer Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and the
Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), with the
Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Luft und Raumfahrt e.V.(DLR),
the major partner in science, operations and data processing of
X-SAR.
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