About this CD-ROM

What is on this CD-ROM ?

This CD-ROM contains data from the JERS-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA); in particular, radar images of Central Africa. The data on this CD-ROM have been "mosaicked" into mosaic tiles; each of which consists of about 100 JERS-1 scenes. The data were acquired between October and November of 1996 (high flood season for the Congo river). This dataset constitutes the first-ever high resolution and single season coverage of the entire Congo river basin and is made possible by the cloud penetrating properties of the radar sensor.
These images are gray scale images in which the brightness of the image corresponds to the amount of radar energy reflected back to the radar. Please read the tutorial for more information.
This CD-ROM set consists of a single CD-ROM. If your browser supports frames then you can see the table of contents for the CD-ROM on the left.
As you have already seen, there are five items on the CD-ROM desktop - a "data" folder, a "docs" folder, a "readme.unx" file (for UNIX computers), a "readme.pc" file (for PC and Mac computers), and a "1stpage.htm" file. (You may also see some other auxiliary files.)

The README is a short description of the CD-ROM in a text file, and "1stpage.htm" is the first page of the html documentation.

The "data" folder contains all the GIF images and binary data.

The "docs" folder contains the html documentation.

The data are in two data formats : 1) 500 meters (pixel spacing) GIF images; 2) 100 meters (pixel spacing) raw 8 bit images.
The GIF images may be found either by clicking on the clickable map, or by clicking on an entry in the table of mosaic tiles. In addition, there is a listing of each mosaic on this CD-ROM in the "data" top level folder. The "Browse Images" entry in the left hand frame (the table of contents) will also link to these pages.
The 8 bit raw images may be found in the "data" folder in the "binaries" subdirectory. These files will have the name ###.dat, where ### is the three digit tile number. The GIF images may also be found in the "data" folder in the "lowres" subdirectory.

How can I get another copy of this CD-ROM set?

You may get another copy by visiting the GRFM home page (on the WWW), and clicking on the link for ordering instructions.

How about South America, S.E. Asia,...?

The CD-ROMs for these data sets will be announced at the GRFM home page (on the WWW) when they are available.

How can I get more information about the GRFM?

The best place to get more information is from ... GRFM home page (on the WWW).

Acknowledgements

This CD-ROM is the result of a collaboration between NASDA, RESTEC, NASA/JPL, and JRC of the European Commission. It was written, designed and produced by Bruce Chapman ¹, Al Wong¹, and Ake Rosenqvist³ with assistance and contributions from Victor Taylor², Sasan Saatchi¹,Frank Degrandi ³and Tony Freeman¹.
A portion of this work was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
¹Jet Propulsion Laboratory
²National Space Development Agency of Japan(NASDA)
³Joint Research Centre - Space Applications Institute - Global Vegetation Mapping Unit (JRC/SAI)

The README is a short description of the CD-ROM in a text file, and "1stpage.htm" is the first page of the html documentation.
	The "data" folder contains all the GIF images and binary data.
The "docs" folder contains the html documentation.