This document contains two satellite images of areas in eastern China. The first image shows haze over eastern China from late November 1999. The second image shows the Yangtze River and Three Gorges Dam area acquired on May 21, 2000.
Note : Rotated counter clockwise to fit in the frame.
55.Description: This spaceborne radar image shows part of the British territory of Hong Kong, adjacent to mainland China. The South China Sea is shown in dark blue and red on the image. Land surfaces are seen in shades of lighter blue and gold, including Hong Kong Island in the lower center, the Kowloon Peninsula in the upper right and many other small islands. The brightest yellow areas are the densely developed areas of Hong Kong's business and residential districts. The small yellow dots in the water are the many ships that make Hong Kong one of the busiest seaports in the Far East. Images such as this can be used by land-use planners to monitor urban development and its effect on the tropical environment.
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The image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) onboard the space shuttle Endeavour on October 10, 1994. The image is 23 kilometers by 31 kilometers (14 miles by 19 miles) and is centered at 22.3 degrees north latitude, 114.1 degrees east longitude. North is toward the upper right. The colors are assigned to different radar frequencies and polarizations of the radar as follows: red is L-band, vertically transmitted and received; green is C-band, vertically transmitted and received; and blue is C-band minus L-band, both vertically transmitted and received. SIR-C/X-SAR, a joint mission of the German, Italian and United States space agencies, is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth.
56Description: This recent SeaWiFS image shows dense haze over eastern China. The view looks eastward across the Yellow Sea towards Korea.
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SeaWiFS image
57Description: This shows a stretch of the Yangtze River in China, including the Wu Gorge, the middle of the three gorges. (Click on the full-resolution version of this image to view a 65-km stretch of the Yangtze River.)
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This Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) image, acquired on May 21, 2000. In this false-color image, red represents vegetated land surface and the light blue ribbon of pixels running left to right is the Yangtze River. A number of its tributaries are visible as well. Blue-green pixels show exposed land surfaces. In the lift-out (yellow box) is the construction site of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest. When the reservoir is filled in 2012, water will rise to a height of 175 meters and extend 600 kilometers. The reservoir will submerge two of the three world-famous gorges, along with irreplaceable cultural and archaeological sites. The project is enormously controversial.Some scientists fear the dam could significantly change the salt content of the Sea of Japan, thereby impacting the climate of that region. This theory is explained in an article appearing in the April 2001 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.The ASTER sensor flies aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft.
78.Description: A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun Mountains that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China’s XinJiang Province. The river appears electric blue as it runs out of the mountains at the bottom right corner of the scene and then fans out into scores of intricate, braided channels that disappear into the desert. Dry channels—the river’s former paths?—appear as silvery etchings at lower right.
Technology This scene was acquired by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 2, 2002
100.Description: This Landsat image of Chengdu is part of a study that is using high- and moderate-resolution satellite data to monitor patterns of urbanization across the Earth. In the image above, yellow areas show the extent of the urban area in 1990, while orange areas show what was built up in the 10 years after that. In many cases, the urban build up has moved out of the core of the city along roadways, which radiate out from the city like spokes on a wheel. A new roadway makes an orange ring around the city and is connected to the core by many new “spokes.” Urban expansion has mostly been on the western side of the city, approaching the mountain foothills.
103.Description: The Turpan Depression, nestled at the foot of China’s Bogda Mountains, is a strange mix of salt lakes and sand dunes. It is one of the few landscapes in the world that lies below sea level.
Technology This image was acquired by Landsat 7’s Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) sensor.