SPACEPHOTOS

The College Fjord with its glaciers was imaged on June 24, 2000. This image covers an area 20 kilometers (13 miles) wide and 24 kilometers (15 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. College Fjord is located in Prince Williams Sound, east of Seward, Alaska. Vegetation is in red, and snow and ice are white and blue. Ice bergs calved off of the glaciers can be seen as white dots in the water. At the head of the fjord, Harvard Glacier (left) is one of the few advancing glaciers in the area; dark streaks on the glacier are medial moraines: rock and dirt that indicate the incorporated margins of merging glaciers. Yale Glacier to the right is retreating, exposing (now vegetated) bedrock where once there was ice. On the west edge of the fjord, several small glaciers enter the water. This fjord is a favorite stop for cruise ships plying Alaska's inland passage. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is the U.S. Science team leader; Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. The primary goal of the mission is to obtain high- resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, the satellite will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of the satellite will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands Evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance.