4 days ago
Biomass: ESA first images from forest spotting satellite revealed
The European Space Agency has revealed the first pictures taken by its new space satellite, images show in great detail a variety of landscapes from continents across the world including South America, Africa and Asia. Biomass' five-year mission will provide detailed three dimensional maps of the world's most dense and remote tropical instruments on board, it can measure woody trunks, branches and stems of trees.
Biomass satellite: What has it captured?
The Biomass mission was launched two months ago, on 29 April, from Europe's Spaceport in French to the ESA, these first images released mark a huge step towards understanding how Earth's forests are changing and exactly how they contribute to the global carbon cycle is the process in which carbon continuously circulates between the atmosphere, the earth, and living things like plants and vibrant colours in each picture were created using instruments on board Biomass, with each colour revealing different types of landscape. For example, green hues mainly represent rainforests, red areas are forested floodplains and wetlands, grasslands are pictured in bluey–purple, while black areas are rivers and lakes.
The team say that, as the mission is in its early days, they are fine-tuning the satellite to make sure it delivers the highest quality data for scientists to accurately determine how much carbon is stored in the world's Biomass Project Manager, Michael Fehringer, explained: "Biomass is equipped with novel space technology, so we've been closely monitoring its performance in orbit, and we're very pleased to report that everything is functioning also expressed how happy scientists were with the pictures."Its first images are nothing short of spectacular - and they're only a mere glimpse of what is still to come," Fehringer added.
What is ESA's Biomass satellite?
Biomass is the first space satellite to carry a long wavelength radar, called special radar means that it can scan deep through the forest canopy and collect information on different parts of the forest, such as tree trunks, branches and stems - where trees store most of their will allow the satellite to provide experts on the ground with new information on forest height and above-ground forest biomass from will then be able to find out more about the state of our forests and how they are changing, and further our knowledge about the role that forests play in the carbon ESA mission will be divided into two phases:The first will provide detailed 3D maps of forests on Earth. This is important as it's not possible to find out the global mass of trees from the second phase will produce five global maps which will enable forest height and above-ground biomass to be hope is that this data will help experts better understand the state of our forests and how they are changing.
Why is the Biomass mission important?
Forests are full of trees and other plants, which absorb carbon dioxide and release animals, including humans, breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. This means trees help to provide us with the oxygen we need to referred to as "Earth's green lungs," forests absorb around eight billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each say that by absorbing carbon dioxide, trees prevent pollution, improve air quality and slow down the effects of climate able to calculate the global carbon cycle is essential to understanding how the world's forests are changing and the future effects this might have for our new Biomass mission has been designed to help scientists do just that.
