April 3, 2002

NASA IMAGES CONFIRM WHAT NEW YORKERS ALREADY KNOW: IT'S DRY

Whether you look at the glass as half empty or half full, reservoirs at 52 percent of capacity for a major metropolitan area spell trouble.

On March 26, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared a drought emergency for the city and four upstate counties in response to the worst drought to hit the eastern United States in nearly 70 years. Restrictions on water use will affect more than 8 million residents of New York. Further evidence of the extent of New York's current drought emergency can be seen in new images taken by NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) on NASA's Terra satellite.

The images are available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/usa/northeast.html

The Aster image pair depicts a 215-square-kilometer (80-square-mile) area around Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains, one of several Catskills reservoirs that supply water to the New York City metropolitan area. The images, taken September 18, 2000 and February 3, 2002, show a dramatic decrease in reservoir water level to the current 52 percent of capacity.

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), Aster will image Earth for the next six years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet.

Aster is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry built the instrument. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is responsible for the American side of the joint U.S.-Japan science team that is validating and calibrating the instrument and the data products. Aster is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra.

The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of Aster will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; evaluating wetlands; monitoring thermal pollution; monitoring coral reef degradation; mapping soil and geology surface temperatures; and measuring surface heat balance.

More information on Aster is available at:

http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is a long-term research and technology program designed to examine Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, ice and life as a total integrated system.

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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Contacts:
Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
818) 354-0474

This text derived from http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_77.html

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