Rio de Janeiro and Guanabara Bay

Guanabara Bay in southeast Brazil is pictured in this image from the Sentinel-1A satellite.

The city of Rio de Janeiro lies on the western banks of the bay and along the Atlantic coast to the south. Rio is connected to the city of Niterói on the east side of the bay by a large bridge which appears as a dotted straight line. To the north, we can see radar reflections from large ships.

Governador is the largest island in Guanabara Bay, and the site of Rio de Janeiro’s main airport. The runways appear as dark lines.

Part of Rio de Janeiro was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012 under the category of ‘cultural landscapes’. The Tijuca National Park – the mountainous area in the lower-left – is a hand-planted rainforest covering more than 30 sq km. The iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer stands at the eastern end of the forest, overlooking the city from the peak of the 700 m-high Corcovado mountain.

Zooming in above the mountains, the two circular structures are large stadiums. The one to the right is Estádio do Maracanã, where the final match of this year’s World Cup will take place on Sunday.

At the bottom-center part of the image, the curved coast of the famous Copacabana is visible, while Sugarloaf mountain sits at the mouth of the bay.

This image, also featured on the Earth from Space video program, was acquired on 13 May by Sentinel-1A’s radar working in 'dual polarization'. The radar gathers information in either horizontal or vertical radar pulses, and colors were assigned to the different types.

Image credit: ESA

Brazil

As football fans worldwide keep their eyes trained on Brazil, ESA’s Proba-V minisatellite captures the entire country in a single image.

The Andean Plateau, or Altiplano, of neighboring Bolivia, including Lake Titicaca and the giant Salar Uyuni salt flat, are visible towards the scene’s western edge.

Proba is smaller than a cubic meter but its view spans a mighty 2250 km. It reveals details 300 m across but the central part of the image is sharper – down to 100 m – as demonstrated in the right-hand image, which shows a detail of the River Negro joining the mighty River Amazon.

Proba-V is a miniaturized ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

The camera’s continent-spanning field of view collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands, ideal for monitoring plant and forest growth as well as inland water bodies.

Proba’s images are processed and distributed to hundreds of scientific end users by VITO, Belgium’s Flemish Institute for Technological Research, extending the coverage of previous generations of the Vegetation camera flown on the Spot-4 and Spot-5 satellites.

Image credit: ESA/BELSPO

Deforestation in Brazil

False color Proba-V image from 4 February 2014 showing deforestation in Brazil.

Image credit: ESA/VITO

Note: For a similar image showing deforestation in Argentina, click here.

South America and the Andes Mountains

An unusual view of South America and the Andes mountains, acquired by Proba-V on 23 April 2014.

Image credit: ESA/VITO

Lagoa dos Patos, Brazil

Proba-V demonstrates its maximum resolution in this view of part of the Lagoa dos Patos lagoon, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil. The city of Porto Alegre is located at the top of the image, visible as a greyish tint. This highlight from a Proba-V Vegetation image was acquired on 6 February 2014 from the central portion of the instrument swath at 100 m resolution.

Image credit: ESA/VITO

Amazon River

This Kompsat-2 image, acquired on 6 July 2012, shows the Amazon River in the heart of northern Brazil’s rainforest. The false color makes land vegetation appear pink, while water appears green and dark blue. In the upper-right corner, we can see some sparse clouds. The shades of pink vary – the bolder color representing thick vegetation with lighter pink showing where trees were possibly cut down. In fact, in the upper-left portion of the image, there’s a clear line between the two shades, showing where vegetation was cut. The white dots show man-made structures. With their unique view from space, Earth observation satellites have been instrumental in highlighting the vulnerability of the rainforests by documenting the scale of deforestation.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Image credit: KARI/ESA

The Brazil-Bolivia Border

The river-delineated border between western Brazil's Acre province (upper left), and northwestern Bolivia's Pando Department (lower right), demarcates a remarkable difference in land use and development practices. Brazil has opened up this part of the rain forest to farming and settlement, producing the herringbone pattern of forest cutting. This part of Bolivia, on the other hand, preserves its native rain forest, untouched by development. The image was acquired July 2, 2008, covers an area of 42 by 45 km, and is located at 10.3 degrees south latitude, 67.2 degrees west longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest

This animation shows deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest in the western Brazilian state of Rondônia from 1986 to 2010. While the central area remains green and untouched, squares of light green and brown pop up over time as the forest is cut away.

The animation was created using two cloud-free images: the first from NASA’s Landsat mission in 1986, and the second from the Spanish Deimos mission in 2010. The changes over time were simulated by referring to other satellite data acquired during the 24 years between the two images.

Video credit: ESA/USGS/Deimos Imaging; text credit: ESA/USGS/Deimos Imaging

The Paraná River

The Paraná River cuts through this image of southern Brazil, acquired by the MERIS instrument on Envisat on 19 March. In the area pictured, the river marks the borders of the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso do Sul to the north and west, São Paulo to the east and Paraná to the south.

Agricultural structures are evident in the surrounding land. Near the center of the image, smoke from a fire was captured blowing southwest from its source.

Photo credit: ESA