The Regional Visualization and Monitoring System (SERVIR) acquired fine bean, dual polarization RADAR imagery captured between July and November 2010 by the PALSAR sensor aboard ALOS, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Advanced Land Observation Satellite.  The imagery domain covers Central America and the Dominican Republic.  Read more…

The high resolution, cloud free snapshots of the Mesoamerican region and the Dominican Republic provide insight at magnificent detail and serve to monitor the condition of natural environments such as forest ecosystems and hydrological networks including biodiversity rich brackish water estuaries and wetlands.  The imagery also contributes to the study of dynamics between the region’s valuable natural environments and rapidly growing human-intervened landscapes including numerous hydroelectric reservoirs, modified coastlines, open-pit mining projects, urban-sprawl, and others.  The high resolution cloud free imagery plays a critical role in extreme event response support provided by SERVIR Mesoamerica as it provides detailed and recent information that may be compared with post-event imagery in generation of affectation analyses.

After generation of the first cloud free image of the region by mosaicking the more than 300 ALOS PALSAR scenes of 70km X 70km was completed, SERVIR set out to study the condition of the region’s invaluable forests, generating what would be defined as a ‘tree cover’ classification in collaboration with environment ministries and other national institutions of Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Regional Mosaic: ALOS PALSAR Imagery

             Low Resolution (150kb)          Medium Resolution(332kb)          High Resolution(1mb) 

National ALOS PALSAR Imagery Mosaics

          Low Resolution (688kb)          Medium Resolution (1.4mb)          High Resolution (11mb)

           Low Resolution (373kb)          Medium Resolution(1mb)          High Resolution (58mb)

         Low Resolution (232kb)          Medium Resolution (652kb)          High Resolution (18mb)  

         Low Resolution(425kb)          Medium Resolution(1.2mb)          High Resolution(55mb)  

         Low Resolution (265kb)          Medium Resolution (715kb)          High Resolution (62mb)  

         Low Resolution (393kb)          Medium Resolution (1mb)          High Resolution (33mb)  

         Low Resolution (229kb)          Medium Resolution (587kb)          High Resolution (25mb)