Science and Space

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Sharpest ever Earth map

The most detailed portrait ever of the Earth’s land surface is being created with ESA’s Envisat environmental satellite. The GLOBCOVER project aims at producing a global land cover map to a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map.

It will be a unique depiction of the face of our planet in 2005, broken down into more than 20 separate land cover classes. The completed GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts. The estimate is that up to 20 terabytes of imagery will be needed to mosaic together the final worldwide GLOBCOVER map – an amount of data equivalent to the contents of 20 million books.

The GLOBCOVER project was launched 2004 as an initiative of ESA which is now evolving to an international collaboration.

posted by: kyawoo at 11:11 | link | comments |
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