Photograph Identification P-44749Baikal Forest, Russia
This is an X-band,
black-and-white image of the forests east of the Baikal Forest in the Jablonowy
Mountains of Russia. The image is centered at 52.5 degrees north latitude and
116 degrees east longitude, in a moderately mountainous region in
south-central Siberia, to the east of Lake Baikal. The mining town of Bukatschatscha is nearby. The data were acquired by the SIR-C/X-SAR system on October 4, 1994, during its second flight aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.
This area is part of an international research
project known as the "TAIGA AEROSPACE INVESTIGATION USING GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION SYSTEM APPLICATIONS." The focus of the investigations with respect
to the SIR-C/X-SAR radar missions, is to determine what additional information
multi-frequency, multi-polarization radar can provide to the study of the
effects of fires in Russian boreal forests. One of the principal areas of
study in this research effort is monitoring the spatial and temporal distribution of the large-scale fires which occur in the Russian boreal forest,
as well as the recovery of these forests after a fire.
The northern boreal forests,
called Taiga, are mainly spruce and fir trees. This ecological setting is as
important to the global carbon cycle as are the rainforests. The area to the
east of Lake Baikal was selected as a test region for this study because of the
large forest fires which have occurred in this area in the past. For example, analysis of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer data have shown that 14.5 million hectares (35.8 million acres) were affected by fires during the
summer of 1987. The Baikal Forest radar imaging pass was pre-planned to transect the area of a large fire occurring just to the southeast of Lake Baikal during that time.
This
region is referred to as the Saibaikalsk Mountains middle taiga region of
Siberia. The dominant tree cover of this region is a combination of three
coniferous species -- fir, spruce and pine -- with some deciduous species,
aspen and birch, co-existing as understory or co-dominant species. The distribution of trees throughout this
region is very dependent on local site conditions. Fir and spruce are more
dominant at lower elevations, and in stream and river valleys where higher soil
moisture and more developed and fertile soil conditions exist. In upland areas
with better drainage and less developed soils, pine is the more dominant tree
species in the overstory. In addition to topography and soil conditions,
another major factor in the development of forests in this region is the
occurrence of wildfires. Large wildfires (some reaching sizes of about 1
million hectares or 2.47 million acres) are common.
While many of the variations in image
intensity seen in this image are the result of topographic effects, some are also due to differences in vegetation and forest cover, and some are due to differences
in the distribution of tree species.The X-SAR
and SIR-C images collected over this region are being studied by a research team
of scientists from Duke University in North Carolina, the Environmental
Research Institute in Michigan, and the International Forestry Institute in
Krasnyarsk, Siberia.
![[EAST OF BAIKAL FOREST]](BAIKALFO.GIF)