MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Stephanie R. Zeluck
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 11, 1998
RAINFOREST MAPPING TECHNIQUES HIGHLIGHTED IN JPL EVENING TALK
"Mapping the Amazon: Science, Supercomputers and Synthetic
Aperture Radar" will be the subject of a free public lecture on
Thursday, March 19 at 7 p.m. in JPL's von Karman Auditorium, 4800
Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena. Seating is limited and will be on a
first-come, first-served basis.
The lecture will be presented by Dr. Anthony Freeman, Radar
Instrument Manager for NASA's planned LightSAR mission. Freeman
was manager of the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C (SIR-C) Outreach
Program from 1994-96, and was recently involved with the
discovery of evidence of a prehistoric civilization and remnants
of ancient temples in Angkor, Cambodia, using the JPL-developed
Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR).
Scientists studying global climate change search for
evidence of carbon, either released as carbon monoxide and
methane, or stored in plant biomass in rainforest regions
sometimes known as the "lungs" of the Earth. Using
sophisticated supercomputers and synthetic aperture radar (called
"SAR"), scientists are now developing large-scale models of the
carbon exchange occurring over the world's rain forests. SAR is
an imaging technique that uses radar to "see" objects under thick
cloud and surface cover and at night. It was used in the early
1990s on the Magellan mission, penetrating Venus' thick clouds
providing detailed images of that planet's surface, and onboard
the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994, allowing archaeologists to
locate ancient Arabia's "lost" city of Ubar by revealing old
caravan routes buried beneath the region's thick layer of sand.
A SAR instrument onboard the Japanese JERS-1 satellite is
now involved in the Global Rain Forest Mapping project, begun in
1995, to systematically map the world's tropical rain forests to
better form models of global carbon exchange. The first result
from that project is a new map of the entire Amazon basin,
available on the internet at
http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/amazon.
Working in conjuction with the SAR investigations are a host
of sophisticated supercomputers, capable of multi-dimensional
mathematical modeling which allows the extensive computations a
product such as the newly-created Amazon map requires. The new
map will be used by scientists to estimate the area subject to
deforestation and the extent of the Amazon's annual flooding.
These estimations are contributing to models of carbon exhange
that are being developed for the Amazon as part of NASA's Mission
to Planet Earth program.
This lecture is part of the von Karman Lecture Series
sponsored monthly by the JPL Media Relations Office. A web site
on the lecture series is located at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lecture. For directions and other
information, call the Media Relations Office at (818) 354-5011.
JPL is a division of the California Instititute of
Technology.
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