The Canadian GlobeSAR program

Abstract

Canada, through the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), in cooperation with the Canadian Space Agency, the International Development Research Centre, Intera Information Technologies (Canada) Ltd,, Innotech Aviation Ltd., and Radarsat International Inc. conducted a project, called GlobeSAR, in which airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery was collected in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia/Pacific region. The primary purpose of GlobeSAR is to strengthen the capability of the participating countries to use radar data in resource management applications, and to prepare for the use of data from the Canadian Radarsat satellite which will be launched in 1995. This program will continue for four years beginning with a training and data acquisition segment, followed by analysis of the airborne SAR and simulated Radarsat products, culminating in the analysis of the actual Radarsat data when these become available in 1995. An important aspect of the program is the close cooperation that will be established between the personnel in Canada and the host countries. GlobeSAR builds on the success of the Tropical Forestry Initiative (TFI) in Latin America, which was carried our recently by CCRS in cooperation with the European Space Agency. Through TFI, CCRS collected airborne radar data over some 15 tropically-forested sites in Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Guyana. With the TFI experience in mind, preliminary planning for a comprehensive global airborne radar program began. >