Science is Fun Fridays!

 


ESA's newly operational Biomass satellite is able to distinguish between different types of vegetation using polarized radar.

The image above is around the Beni River in Bolivia.  The water is black and rainforests are green, while the grasslands are purple and the wetlands are red.

A key goal of this satellite mission is to measure how Earth's carbon-rich areas are shifting.  With these views, it will be easier to quantify the scale of deforestation, for example.



Clockwise from the top left:

Mount Gamkonora in Indonesia, the Tibesti Mountains in Chad, the Ivindo River in Gabon, and the Nimrod Glacier in Antarctica.

Biomass

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