Biblioteca

Catàleg dels llibres

Podeu consultar en línia el catàleg dels llibres de la biblioteca.

Imatges de la biblioteca:

Deixa un comentari Cancel·la les respostes

Heu d'iniciar la sessió per escriure un comentari.

ESA
NASA
Error

Earth from Space: Deforestation in Bolivia

Video: 00:03:15

This week's edition of the Earth from Space programme features a Copernicus Sentinel-2 image over an area in the Santa Cruz Department of Bolivia, where part of the tropical dry forest has been cleared for agricultural use.

See also Deforestation in Bolivia to download the image.

Deforestation in Bolivia

Deforestation in Bolivia Image:

This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features an area in the Santa Cruz Department of Bolivia, where part of the tropical dry forest has been cleared for agricultural use.

Since the 1980s, the area has been rapidly deforested owing to a large agricultural development effort where people from the Andean high plains (the Altiplano region) have been relocated to the lowlands of Bolivia.

The relatively flat lowlands and abundant rainfall make this region suitable for farming. In fact, the local climate allows farmers to benefit from two growing seasons. The region has been transformed from dense forest into a patterned expanse of agricultural land. This deforestation method, common in this part of Bolivia, is characterised by the radial patterns that can be seen clearly in the image.

Each patterned field is approximately 20 sq km and each side is around 2.5 km long.

Small settlements can be seen in the centre of each individual field in the image, which typically contain a church, a school and a soccer field. These communities are joined by a road network depicted by the straight lines that bisect the radial fields and connect the adjacent areas.

Meandering streams and rivers can be seen flowing through the fields. The long, thin strips of land in the top right of the image are most likely cultivated soybean fields.

Rainforests worldwide are being destroyed at an alarming rate. This is of great concern as they play an important role in global climate, and are home to a wide variety of plants and animals.

Because of their unique perspective from space, Earth observation satellites are instrumental in providing comprehensive information on the full extent and rate of deforestation, which is particularly useful for monitoring remote areas.

This composite image was created by combing three separate ‘Normalised Difference Vegetation Index’ images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. The first image, from 8 April 2019, is visible in red; the second from 22 June 2019, can be seen in green; and the third from 5 September 2019 can be seen in blue. The Normalised Difference Vegetation Index is widely used in remote sensing as it gives scientists an accurate measure of healthy and status of plant growth.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Watch live: final #SpacewalkforAMS

Luca photographed by Oleg Skripochka from inside the International Space Station

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan will exit the International Space Station airlock together for the fourth time Saturday 25 January. It is the ninth spacewalk for Expedition 61 – the most spacewalks ever performed during a single Space Station expedition – and the last in a complex series to maintain the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS-02.

Galileo now replying to SOS messages worldwide

Galileo

As well as providing global navigation services, Europe’s Galileo satellite constellation is contributing to saving more than 2000 lives annually by relaying SOS messages to first responders. And from now on the satellites will reply to these messages, assuring people in danger that help is on the way.

Two Moon rovers are better than one

Two Moon rovers are better than one Image:

ESA has signed a deal with space engineering company COMEX in France to develop an innovative double-rover architecture for lunar surface exploration, based on a tractor and trailer concept. Read more here

Into the Shadow

On January 21, 2019 moonwatchers on planet Earth saw a