| STS-008 Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Photographic Highlights |
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 STS008-33-993 |
Elephant damage to vegetation in Botswana: At the junction of
the Chobe and Zambezi Rivers, Botswana, increasing elephant
populations are having large impacts on local vegetation. Scientists
working in the region used spectral analysis of an astronaut
photograph digitized from film to identify areas where woodland
vegetation had been heavily damaged by the elephants. The technique
used the analysis of texture of the red band (or channel) in the
image. In the image above, the natural color photo has been combined
with a texture analysis of the red band. The lighter colored areas
near the labels a, b and c represent the areas with the heaviest
elephant damage. Field teams working on the ground verified the
presence of damage. This image is one of the examples of the applications of astronaut photography to conservation biology presented in a paper by Robinson et al. in the August 2001 issue of the scientific journal Conservation Biology. The paper is part of a special section on "Contributions of Remote Sensing to Biodiversity Conservation" featuring a number of different NASA-sponsored studies. |
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This service is provided by the International Space Station program and the JSC Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science Directorate. Recommended Citation: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth." . |
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