The Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana is visible in this radiometric terrain corrected (RTC) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscatter image from the ESA (European Space Agency's) Sentinel-1A platform. The delta covers 3 million acres (4,700 sq mi or 12,000 sq km) of land from Vermilion Bay in the west to the Chandeleur Islands in the east and is one of the largest coastal wetland areas in the United States. Click and zoom in on the map to look at different parts of the delta in greater detail.
The RTC SAR backscatter from Sentinel-1 (RTC-S1) product, produced by NASA's Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project, provides terrain-corrected radar images with a 30-meter pixel spacing. SAR images deliver all-weather, day-and-night imaging of Earth's surface.
RTC-S1 images are displayed in false-color for better visual interpretation of the SAR backscatter data. The false-color RGB visualization combines co-polarized VV (vertical transmit vertical receive) or HH (horizontal transmit horizontal receive) backscatter values, shown in red and blue, with cross-polarized VH (vertical transmit horizontal receive) and HV (horizontal transmit vertical receive) values, shown in green, to generate a color image from SAR data.
In this false-color scale, vegetated areas appear green; urban and/or sparsely vegetated areas appear white/pink; calm water, dry sand, and frozen ground appears black; and rough water appears purple or magenta. Note there are other land covers not listed that may have similar appearance, and it is recommended that users consult auxiliary datasets to help determine the land cover of interest.
The OPERA RTC-S1 product contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data corresponding to the same time period of the OPERA RTC-S1 product. The OPERA project, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and funded by the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG), creates remote sensing products to address Earth observation needs across U.S. civilian federal agencies.
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