Seen from Space 2004
Zoom in on the Town of Athens, Greece
Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) with Global Imager (GLI) acquired these images of Greece facing the Aegean Sea and surrounding areas. Greece mainly consists of the northern parts of the Balkan Peninsula, Peloponnisos Peninsula, northern border of Bulgaria, and more than two thousand islands in the Aegean Sea. In this image, a complicated coastline generated from indented peninsulas and islands rises clearly to the surface of the deep blue Aegean Sea under a summer sky. High vegetation areas, the Pindhos Mountains and Rodopi Mountains, are represented in dark green in Fig. 1. Most of Greece's national land is impoverished rocky terrain, with less vegetated areas represented in light brown in the image.
Major cities like Athens appear white in Fig. 1. Click boxed areas A-F to see close-up images surrounding Athens. These images were acquired by the Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer (AVNIR) with a higher resolution sensor than GLI..
From this AVNIR image we can distinguish major structures such as the airport and stadium. We can also distinguish major streets, vegetation, and soil conditions. These images provide important geographical information for urban utilization, and understanding and solving the changes of soil conditions such as desertification and deforestation of tropical forests. The Advanced Land-Observing Satellite (ALOS), which will be launched in the future, has Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer 2 (AVNIR-2) with a resolution of 10 m. This improved AVNIR (resolution of 16 m) enables more detailed observation of land and coastal areas.
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