ERS - Watching the Land

Part one of the series 'ERS-Watching The World.' ESA's European Remote Sensing satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2 were launched in 1991 and 1995 respectively. In addition to providing scientific data, these satellites now support operational and commercial applications of Earth observation worldwide. This five-part series gives an overview of the structure, use and capabilities of the ERS satellites. 'Watching The Land' describes how ERS satellites can be used in observing land use - forestry and agriculture, for example - thus helping towards efficient resource management. The video includes:

00:32 Views from streets / rivers in Bangkok, Thailand (or similar place), with marked in river boats

01:14 Ariane launch of ERS satellite; ERS which can map serial crop on large scale which can give advance information of potential harvest. From this grain supplies can be predicted and plans made for the next growing season. This is important information for many countries.

01:42 Unloading rice bags from boat in Thailand, which is one of the greatest exporters of rise. Failure in crops can result in hunger for many across Asia.

02:00 Rice fields. Detailed information of the field and production is needed, but manual observation is costly.

02:12 By use of ERS synthetic aperture radar, which can penetrate through the cloud cover, a large area can be scanned quickly and effectively.

02:23 Thailand official says that using satellites, the monitoring can be done must faster and much cheaper.

02:45 Observations on ground is however to calibrate and correlate the satellite observations from ERS.

03:14 ERS images of ground with rice fields.

03:35 Analysis of ERS data to calculate the exact production potential and the predicted harvest can be calculated well in advance.

03:56 Another tasks for ERS is to monitor tropical forest through cloud covers. This observation can be used to observe de-forestation.

04:11 Grain field. In Europe the same date has been to identify the land use. Estimates of the crops are made across the whole region as part of the European Commission’s Monitoring Agriculture through Remote Sensing (MARS) programme The aim is to provide EU with more accurate production numbers.

04:48 ERA animation

05:03 Soil preparation.

05:25 ESRIN ERS processing centre. Advanced estimates of grain production can be calculated. More accurate production data can help many government to maximise their agriculture.

05:56 The End