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Full catalog/JERS-1_SAR_GRFM_Amazon_Mosaics_1280
JERS-1_SAR_GRFM_Amazon_Mosaics_1280·v2·dataset

Radar mosaics of the Amazon (JERS-1, 100 m, 1995-96)

JERS-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar, 100-m Mosaics, South America: 1995-1996, R1
land NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Radar image mosaics covering the entire Amazon River Basin at about 100-meter detail, captured in both the low-flood and high-flood seasons of 1995-1996.

How it's made. Assembled from radar images taken by Japan's JERS-1 satellite, mosaicked into tiles; because radar sees through clouds, it produced the first complete single-season view of the basin.

How & where you'd use it. Valuable for mapping the Amazon's forests and flooding, and as a historical baseline for tracking changes in this often cloud-covered region. Delivered as GeoTIFF files.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVERTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER FEATURES › WETLANDS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1995-01-01 → 1996-07-31
  • Measured byJERS-1 (SAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-82.0004, -19.9996, -48.0004, 13.0002
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set provides ~100-m resolution image mosaics of South America acquired during the low flood season between September and December 1995 and during the high flood season between May and July of 1996. The images cover the same areas during both seasons and were obtained from the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 (JERS-1) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). The data were mosaicked into 34 tiles for each season, each consisting of about 50 JERS-1 scenes. This data set constitutes the first-ever high-resolution and single season coverage of the entire Amazon River Basin, made possible by the cloud penetrating properties of the radar sensor. The images are from the original JERS-1 SAR Global Rain Forest Mapping Project. This data set contains 66 files in GeoTIFF (.tiff) format. There are 32 files for the low flood season and 34 files for the high flood season.

Get the data

jers-1_sar_grfm_amazon_mosaics_1280_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="JERS-1_SAR_GRFM_Amazon_Mosaics_1280",
    version="2",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.