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Thursday, 28 March, 2002, 11:23 GMT
'Green' satellite calls home
Senegal: Intensification of land use can increase soil erosion
Europe's flagship Earth-observation satellite has produced its first images of the planet.
The Envisat image shows how the 3,250-square-kilometre chunk of ice has shattered into thousands of small bergs and is now drifting out into the Weddell Sea. Other pictures supplied by the satellite - the biggest and most expensive that Europe has ever put into orbit - provide stunning views of Africa. Environment policy Envisat was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou in French Guiana on 28 February/1 March.
Mission controllers have spent the last month switching on and calibrating the craft's sensors - a process known as the "switch on and data acquisition phase". European Space Agency (Esa) officials say everything is working as it should. Data from Envisat are sent down once per 100-minute orbit to the Kiruna station located in north Sweden. The information goes through several processing stages before being released to scientists or sold to anyone who might want to buy it. Rapid warming The Envisat data will build further on that gathered over the past 10 years by Esa's ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites, which have already given important insights into the impact of human activity on the environment.
The first images sent down to Earth from Envisat were acquired by its ASAR radar and MERIS instruments. Perhaps the most dramatic is the picture of the break-up of the Larsen B ice shelf. Envisat was launched just in time to catch the shelf's final destruction. The collapse of the 200-metre-thick Larsen B is the result of the unprecedented warming experienced in the Antarctic Peninsula region in the last 50 years. Fishing policies This type of observation can help scientists understand ice dynamics and ice/climate interactions, and also global ocean circulation patterns.
These types of data feed into fisheries policies because the concentrations mark the areas of high nutrition that attract fish. Another MERIS image shows the Casamance region of Senegal. It details the seaward flow of sediment which comes from inland soil erosion. Changes in land use can have a dramatic impact on soil loss.
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19 Mar 02 | Science/Nature
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