Looking at Lands, Glaciers, Forests, Floodplains, Coasts and Ancient Civilizations (AIRSAR)

The Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) is an all-weather imaging tool able to penetrate through clouds and collect data at night, developed and managed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. AIRSARs longer wavelengths can also see into forest canopies, through thin sand cover and dry snow pack. AIRSAR serves as a NASA radar technology test-bed for demonstrating new radar technology and acquiring data for the development of radar processing techniques and applications.

AIRSARs crusade wouldnt be possible without NASAs DC-8, a flexible, world-class sub-orbital platform that has flown hundreds of payloads. NASA has provided the international science community with this heavy-lift airborne laboratory and its flight crew, engineering staff, ground and maintenance personnel and support staff, capable of flying virtually anywhere.

AIRSARs sensor capabilities provide data for a wide range of applications including biomass estimation, soil moisture measurements, vegetation classification, land-use classification, slope estimates for natural hazard studies, along-track interferometry to measure coastal currents, wetland and flooded forest classification, natural hazard monitoring, geologic mapping, and glacier studies.

During this deployment, data will be collected over Central and South America and Antarctica. During the approximately 100 flight hours, AIRSAR is expected to acquire polarimetric and/or interferometric data along a 20,000-kilometer (12,430 miles) track, over 40 sites. AIRSAR will collect data related to the following NASA science programs:

• Cryospheric Science
• Land Cover/Land Use Change
• Natural Hazards
• Physical Oceanography
• Terrestrial Ecology
• Hydrology

Much of the archaeological evidence needed to understand Pre-Columbian societies comes from identifying and documenting features remaining on the landscape. Difficult terrain and logistics have limited ground data collection and previous remote sensing techniques were unable to penetrate the forest. This AIRSAR mission is expected to detect features such as ancient fortifications, causeways, walls and other evidence of advanced civilizations hidden beneath the forest. Its images will shed insights into how modern humans interact with their landscape and how ancient peoples lived and what became of their civilizations. AIRSARs potential for archaeological applications was first demonstrated at Angkor, Cambodia, in 1996, where it revealed more detailed images than those gleaned from radar images gathered on a previous Space Shuttle flight.

In conservation science, forested ecosystems like those in Central America cover less than 30 percent of Earths land area yet contain 90 percent of all living species. Such areas serve as a large pool of terrestrial carbon, have substantial interactions with Earths climate and have been dramatically impacted by human activities. Their vulnerable wetlands and floodplains are important water sources for people and play a key role in regional and global hydrological processes, yet are poorly inventoried. Natural and human environmental threats have reduced the regions biological diversity and increased the threat to historical and archeological sites. Numerous organizations and government agencies, including NASA, have increased efforts to provide solutions. AIRSAR will collect data over sites with the highest priorities for conservation scientists to measure the structure, biomass and carbon content of the forests, evaluate changes, and develop models and protocols to mitigate impacts.

In South America and Antarctica, AIRSAR will collect imagery and high-precision topography data to help determine the contribution of southern hemisphere glaciers to sea level rise due to climate change. In Patagonia, a recent study by NASA and others found this contribution had more than doubled from 1995 to 2000 compared to the previous 25 years. AIRSAR data will make it possible to determine whether that trend is continuing or accelerating. Much less is known about the poorly mapped glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula, an area 10 times larger, which has recently experienced rapid atmospheric warming, triggering a widespread retreat of floating ice shelves, reducing permanent snow cover and lengthening the melt season. AIRSAR will provide reliable information on ice shelf thickness to measure the contribution of the glaciers to sea level rise and will provide a precise topographic reference for comparison with satellite laser altimetry data from NASAs Icesat satellite and previous airborne data.

AIRSAR enables researchers to develop and test new radar technologies for spaceborne operations. Polarimetric SAR instrumentation demonstrated by AIRSAR was flown as the Shuttle Imaging Radar-C (SIR-C) mission in 1994.  More recently, the February 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission mapped the world with a technique similar to, and demonstrated by, AIRSARs TOPSAR mode. An 80MHz bandwidth option - achieving 1.5m (4.9 feet) resolution - has been incorporated into AIRSAR in support of a future spaceborne radar mission. 

As part of NASAs Earth Science Enterprise, AIRSAR first flew in 1988 and continues to conduct at least one flight campaign each year, either in the United States or on an international mission. 

Contacts:

Bruce Chapman
Science Coordinator
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
bruce.chapman@jpl.nasa.gov

Steven Durden
Project Manager
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Steven.L.Durden@jpl.nasa.gov

Science Goals:

• Study the extent and distribution of archeological Mayan civilization (using foliage-penetrating radar).
• Study the glaciers of Patagonia and the Antarctic peninsula.
• Investigate new techniques for the measurement of the forest structure of dense tropical forests.
• Fill in the largest "void" in the SRTM-derived map of South American topography.
• Collect additional data for various research initiatives.

Partners:

NASA will work in close collaboration with the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institute, National Geographic, Conservation International, the Organization of Tropical Studies, the Central American Commission for Environment and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, and numerous universities.

When:

March 1-20, 2004

Where:

Scientists will make measurements during survey flights across southern Mexico and Central America, South America, and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Links:

Mission Sites:

http://airsar.jpl.nasa.gov/
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Research

For press releases and general information about NASAs DC-8:

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/DC8_CostaRica.html
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/earth/f_airsar.html
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/dc8_feature.html