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PHOTO CAPTION                               P-47920
                                            November 18, 1996
                                            NSCAT/South America

This is a radar image of the Amazon rainforest in South America 
taken by the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) onboard Japan's Advanced 
Earth Observing Satellite. The scatterometer's primary function 
is to study winds over the oceans, but scientists have devised a 
way of studying changes in the instrument's radar backscatter to 
look at land surfaces as well.  The scatterometer's radar is 
sensitive to conditions on the Earth's surface, such as the type 
and density of vegetation.  Tropical rainforests are critical to 
the climatic health of  the Earth and are thought to contain half 
of all the world's species.  This false color image is being used 
by scientists to identify types of vegetation on the surface. 
Blue and purple areas are tropical rainforest and green and 
yellow regions are woodlands and savanna.  Mountains and degraded 
farm lands show up as black. The scatterometer instrument is a 
new tool in land studies and allows for comparisons over long 
time spans in order to assess the extent of tropical 
deforestation in this sensitive area. NSCAT was launched from 
Japan on August 16, 1996, and the mission represents the first 
major collaboration between the two nations in Earth remote-
sensing. JPL developed, built and manages the NSCAT instrument 
for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program.

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