The Global Rain Forest Mapping Project

The Global Rain Forest Mapping project (GRFM) is an effort led by the National Space Development Agency of Japan/Earth Observation Research Center (NASDA EORC), in collaboration with the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Space Applications Institute of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC/SAI), the Alaska SAR Facility (ASF), the Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center of Japan (ERSDAC) and the Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan (RESTEC), with significant input also from the Unversity of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the National Institute for Research of the Amazon (INPA). The project goals are to acquire spatially and temporally contiguous L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data sets over the tropical belt of the Earth using the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1), and to generate semi-continental scale, 100 m resolution, image mosaics to be provided for research and educational purposes world wide.

This project is divided into three geographical regions : South and Central America, Equatorial Africa, and South-East Asia, including northern Australia. Each region was observed at least once between September 1995 and February 1997. In total, some 13,000 SAR scenes have been acquired.

Papers Published

List of published journal articles and conference papers related to the GRFM project, and/or to JERS-1 SAR and forestry" before March 2001. In addition, a special issue of the International Journal of Remote Sensing is scheduled for publication.

South America (the Amazon basin)

The entire Amazon Basin, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was acquired in a single sweep during the generally low flood time of the Amazon River in September - December 1995. This portion of the data set covers an area of about 8 million km²comprising some 1500 ASF processed scenes (corresponding to some 2000 NASDA scenes). The same area was covered again in May - August 1996, during a high flood period of the Amazon river. SAR image mosaics covering this reagion are featured on this CD-ROM set.

Central America and Pantanal

Central America, from Panama to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, were acquired in July-August 1996, complemented by the wetland regions in central Brazil (Pantanal) in February 1997. Wetland regions in Bolivia, adjacent to the Pantanal have also been covered.

Equatorial Africa

SAR data over central and West Africa, from the Eastern coast of Kenya to Liberia and Guinea in the West were acquired in January-March 1996. The area covered lies between 9.5 deg north and 9.5 deg South, extends approximately 6000km along the Equator, covering some 8 milli on km². The Congo River Basin, about 3.5 million km², was covered again during October - November 1996, targeting the high water season of the river. Madagascar was acquired in January 1997. In all, the African data amount to 3893(!) scenes.

South-East Asia and Australia

Finally, South-East Asia, including the major islands of New Guinea, Borneo/Kalimantan, the Philippine Islands, Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, the Indochina peninsula and, in addition, northern Australia, were covered (in portions) between March 1996 and February 1997. This area covers approximately 4000 scenes.

Several CD-roms have been produced, are planned for production, between 1998 and 2003. The tentative catalog is as follows (the CD-ROMs will not be made in chronological order):

Volume name	Region	Acquisition dates	# of disks in set
AM-1	South America	September - December 1995 and May - July 1996	4
AM-2	South America	September - December 1995	2
AM-3	Central America & Pantanal	July-August 1996, February 1997	1
AFR-1	Equatorial Africa Madagascar	January - March 1996 and October - November 1996 January 1997	3
SEA-1	Mainland South-East Asia	Jan-Feb 1997 - August 1998	2
SEA-2	Insular South-East Asia	1994, 1996, 1998	2
SEA-3	The Phillipines and New Guinea Island`		1
AU-1	Australia		2
EDU-1	Educational, Selected Scenes, Classifications etc.	Entire GRFM	2