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1995-02-23
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PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
PHOTO CAPTION P-43923
April 16, 1994
Raco biomass map
This biomass map of the Raco, Michigan, area was produced from
data acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar C/X-Band Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) onboard space shuttle Endeavour.
Biomass is the amount of plant material on an area of Earth's
surface. Radar can directly sense the quantity and
organizational structure of the woody biomass in the forest.
Science team members at the University of Michigan used the radar
data to estimate the standing biomass for this Raco site in the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Detailed surveys of 70 forest
stands will be used to assess the accuracy of these techniques.
The seasonal growth of terrestrial plants, and forests in
particular, leads to the temporary storage of large amounts of
carbon, which could directly affect changes in global climate.
In order to accurately predict future global change, scientists
need detailed information about current distribution of
vegetation types and the amount of biomass present around the
globe. Optical techniques to determine net biomass are
frustrated by chronic cloud-cover. Imaging radar can penetrate
through cloud-cover with negligible signal losses.
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Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-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.
#####