Contact: Elizabeth Braun
ebraun@whrc.org
508-540-9900
Woods Hole Research Center

ALOS/PALSAR Mosaic -- Xingu Basin, Mato Grosso, Brazil

Caption: One of the greatest threats to the Amazon rainforest is the rapid expansion of industrial agriculture, and rates of deforestation are likely to increase in the coming decades as demands for biofuel and animal feed increase. Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center are actively involved in the development of policy mechanisms focused on compensating rainforest nations for slowing deforestation, thereby reducing their emissions from heat-trapping greenhouse gases. As part of this effort, Dr. Josef Kellndorfer and his colleagues are investigating the latest spaceborne remote sensing technologies for monitoring tropical deforestation, including a new Japanese radar sensor, the Phased Array L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar, carried on board the Advanced Land Observing Satellite. Using data from the ALOS/PALSAR, Dr. Kellndorfer's group has produced the first-of-its-kind, large-scale, wall-to-wall image mosaic for a portion of the Amazon basin (see A above). Launched in 2006, the ALOS/PALSAR will deliver annual pan-tropical image acquisitions over short time frames (~3 months) and through dense cloud cover and precipitation. These characteristics make ALOS data ideally suited for reducing current uncertainties associated withquantifying forest loss and agricultural expansion (see B and C above) across the tropics.

Credit: Josef Kellndorfer/Wayne Walker, The Woods Hole Research Center (whrc.org)

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