Mapping the Amazon: Mosaic tiles animation (2002)
2002 · Animation
- Animation
Synopsis
A satellite can cover the Amazon in just two months. The mapping team chose a Japanese satellite outfitted with synthetic aperture radar, or SAR for short. SAR is a natural fit for the Amazon. It can penetrate the clouds that pour rain for half of the year and the smoke from trees burned by farmers to clear land. SAR even works at night. As you might imagine, the satellite collects a pile of data. In raw form, these observations are gibberish. Focusing them requires a supercomputer to crunch fifteen hundred trillion calculations. The output is rich images of the Amazon. Scientists listed worked as a team on Mosaicking Software and Mosaic Production. Note: 1,500 scenes combine into Amazon rainforest mosaic. Animator: Stuart A. Snodgrass (GST), Tom Bridgman (GST), Randall Jones (GST). Scientist: Bruce Chapman (NASA/JPL CalTech), David Curkendall (NASA/JPL CalTech), Tony Freeman (NASA/JPL CalTech), Craig Miller (NASA/JPL CalTech), Herb Siegel (NASA/JPL CalTech), Paul Siqueira (NASA/JPL CalTech), Kathya Zamora (NASA/JPL CalTech). Platforms/Sensors/Data Sets: JERS-1.
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Details
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- NASA