Vineland Swath
 C - Band |
 L - Band |
 False Color Composite |
These images show the various types of land use/land cover for a portion of Central New Jersey. The images were acquired on April 18, 1994 by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR). The area is centered at approximately 74.6 degrees west longitude and 39.6 degrees north latitude. The image covers an area 20.5 km by 106.9 km. The greyscale images are L-band HH and C-band HH . The false-color composite is created by displaying L-band HH in red, L-band HV in green, and C-band HH in blue. This image covers part of the Pinelands National Reserve. The Pinelands is a landscape of upland pine-oak forests interlaced with streams, dense swamps, and heath or cranberry bogs. The town of Hammonton is located in the lower center as an area of bright pink surrounded by various type of agriculture in reds and pinks. Wharton State Forest lies north of Hammonton, and the Mullica River is visible first as a whitish line through the forest, then as a dark line where it emerges from the tree canopy. The Pinelands is a landscape dominated by fire, and the various shades of color indicate areas that have been burned at different times. The SIR-C/X-SAR data can be used by scientists interested in studying how fire affects the landscape of the Pinelands, as well as planners and others who need information about land use/land cover.
Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. The radars illuminate Earth with microwaves allowing detailed observations at any time, regardless of weather or sunlight conditions. SIR-C/X-SAR uses three microwave wavelengths: L-band (24 cm), C-band (6 cm) and X-band (3 cm). The multi-frequency data will be used by the international scientific community to better understand the global environment and how it is changing. The SIR-C/X-SAR data, complemented by aircraft and ground studies, will give scientists clearer insights into those environmental changes which are caused by nature and those changes which are induced by human activity. SIR-C was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. X-SAR was developed by the Dornier and Alenia Spazio companies for the German space agency, Deutsche Agentur fuer Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), with the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Luft und Raumfahrt e.v. (DLR), the major partner in science, operations and data processing of X-SAR.
