Global Rain Forest Mapping Project

The Global Rain Forest Mapping project (GRFM) is an effort led by the Earth Observation Research Center (EORC) of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) in cooperation with, among others, the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Alaska SAR Facility (ASF), the Space Applications Institute of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC/SAI), 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). Its goal is to acquire contiguous Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data sets of the major tropical rain forests of the Earth using the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1 or FUYO-1).

This project is divided into three geographical regions : South and Central America, Central and Western Africa, and South-East Asia and Northern Australia. Each region was observed at least once during a "single season" between September 1995 and January 1997.

South and Central America

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 comprises some 1500 (ASF processed) scenes and covers an area of about 8 million km2. The same area, including the Northern part of South America and Central America, was covered again in May - August 1996, during a high flood period of the Amazon river.

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 6000 km along the Equator and amounts to about 2200 scenes. The Congo River Basin - some 1500 scenes - was covered again during the general high water season of the river(October - November 1996). Madagascar - some 260 scenes - was finally acquired in January 1997.

South East Asia

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 late 1996 and early 1997. This area covers approximately 4000 NASDA processed scenes.

Several CD-roms are planned for production during 1998 and 1999. These CD-ROMs will contain both 100 meter binary image files, and lower resolution 500 meter GIF images. These images will be mosaics of the individual JERS-1 image scenes. Typically, around 100 JERS-1 image scenes are contained within each mosaic. The tentative catalog is as follows (the CD-ROMs will not be made in chronological order):

Volume nameRegionAcquisition dates# of disks in setCompletion date
AM-1 South America Selected scenes 2TBD
AM-2 South America September/December 1995 2March 1998
AM-3 South and Central America September/December 1995 and May/July 1996 4TBD
AFR-1 Africa Selected scenes 2TBD
AFR-2 Central, West and East Africa, and MadagascarJanuary/March 1996, October/November 1996, and January 1997 3TBD
AFR-3X Central Africa October/November 1996 1November 1998
SEA-1 S.E. Asia Selected scenes 2TBD
SEA-2 S.E. Asia November 1996/February 1997 3TBD