Earth from Space: Río de la Plata
The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the Río de la Plata estuary between Argentina and Uruguay.
Zoom in to explore this image at its full resolution or click on the circles to learn more.
This image was created by combining three different radar images from July and November 2022 and March 2023. Each image has been assigned a colour: red, green and blue respectively. This technique is used to highlight changes between acquisitions and to monitor the vegetation growth.
In radar images, built up areas and human-made features are easy to identify as they usually appear as bright patches.
Río de la Plata, or River Plate, is an estuary formed by the Parana and Uruguay Rivers, both of which appear black in the image. The Parana threads through forested marshland to enter the Río de la Plata from the left, while the Uruguay flows roughly north–south to join the Río de la Plata from above. The course of the Uruguay River delineates the border between Uruguay (right) and Argentina.
At the point where the rivers meet, the Río de la Plata is 48-km wide and extends for 290 km before opening into the Atlantic Ocean. Several islands are visible at the head of the estuary, but more are being added as some 57 million cubic metres of sediment is transported every year from upstream by the rivers into the Río de la Plata.
The large conurbation of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, is visible as a distinct white area on the southern bank of the Río de la Plata, with the smaller provincial capital of La Plata just to its east.
On the north side of the estuary, opposite to Buenos Aires, the smaller white area is the Uruguayan port of Colonia del Sacramento, which is surrounded by a colourful patchwork of agricultural fields. The different colours are down to the various crops and growth stages at the time of the satellite acquisitions.
Zooming in, clusters of coloured dots, which are ships present at the time of the different acquisitions, can be seen in the dark water of the estuary, mainly off the coasts of La Plata and Colonia del Sacramento.
