Wednesday, October 10, 2012

High Resolution Imagery for the Brazilian Amazon

As part of its DETER program to detect illegal deforestation, INPE (National Institute for Space Research) of Brazil publicly provides imagery from the CBERS satellite program. You must first register before downloading imagery at this link. Then select imagery:

Satellite: CBERS 2B or CBERS 2

Instrument: CCD for multispectral 20-m resolution imagery, HRC for 2.7 m panchromatic band (CBERS 2B only)

You may select scenes with the (clunky) navigation pane, or based on coordinates, a city name, or path/row (recommended). To determine path/row, click on "Files and Documents" to the right (Item 5) and download "CBERS Reference Grid - WRS (Shape File)" (also stored in S:\Resources\CBERS_shp). Set the coordinate system to WGS 1984.

HRC imagery can be used to sharpen CCD. There are 25 HRC scenes per  CCD: subpaths A-E from west to east, and subrows 1-5 from north to south (though a CCD scene's corresponding 25 HRC scenes don't occupy quite the same footprint). Note that scenes may require georeferencing.