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NSCAT Data
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Amazon Rainforest in South America
This is a radar image of the Amazon rainforest in South America taken by the NASA Scatterometer
(NSCAT) which was onboard Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite. The scatterometer's primary function
was to study winds over the oceans, but scientists have devised a way of studying changes in the
instrument's radar backscatter to look at land surfaces as well. The scatterometer's radar was
sensitive to conditions on the Earth's surface, such as the type and density of vegetation.
Tropical rainforests are critical to the climatic health of the Earth and are thought to
contain half of all the world's species. The false color image is being used by scientists to
identify types of vegetation on the surface. Blue and purple areas are tropical rainforest and
green and yellow regions are woodlands and savanna. Mountains and degraded farm lands show up
as black. The scatterometer instrument is a new tool in land studies and allows for comparisons
over long time spans in order to assess the extent of tropical deforestation in this sensitive
area. NSCAT was launched from Japan on August 16, 1996, and the mission represented the first
major collaboration between the two nations in Earth remote-sensing. JPL developed, built and
manages the NSCAT instrument for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program.
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