This Copernicus Sentinel 2 image shows the Nueva Vizcaya province in the Philippines, highlighting its agricultural landscape and urban areas through a false color composite. The image depicts different seasons in different colors, revealing intricate details about crop growth stages, flooded rice fields, and urbanization. Credit: Contains corrected Copernicus Sentinel data (2022-23) processed by ESA. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This pseudocolor satellite image from Copernicus Sentinel 2 brightens the center of Nueva Vizcaya province on Luzon, the Philippines’ largest and most populous island.
The image’s color is due to it being a multitemporal composite consisting of three Copernicus Sentinel 2 images acquired in the mission’s near-infrared channel over a 10-month period. Each acquisition is assigned a different color. Red is the acquisition in May 2022 during the hot dry season, green is the acquisition in September 2022 during the rainy season, and blue is the acquisition in March 2023 during the cool dry season.
This combination highlights different characteristics such as crop type and changes that occur between acquisitions indicating different growth stages.
A patchwork of brightly colored farmland stands out from the center of the image to the bottom left. Areas of red and green shades mean that plant growth took place in May and September, respectively. The fields visible in shades of blue, which make up most of the image, indicate that plant growth occurred mainly in March, during the cool dry season.
Perhaps due to intensive rice production, there are irrigation canals between the fields, and most fields remain flooded all year round. A bright white area, such as the one in the middle of a field, indicates a zone covered with dense vegetation.
Straight lines and gray areas represent roads and urban areas. These include Nueva Vizcaya’s largest town, Solano, visible in the lower left surrounded by blue fields, and Bayombong, the provincial capital further south.
The dark curving lines represent rivers, the largest of which is the Magat River, flowing northeast through the image. If you look closely, you can see different colors along the river’s flow. This is probably due to changes in water levels and river channels at different times of the year.
Copernicus Sentinel 2 has 13 spectral channels and is designed to provide data that can be used to map and monitor agricultural land, as the mission frequently revisits the same areas and has high spatial resolution. , changes in inland waters can be closely monitored.
In January 2023, ESA and the European Commission signed an agreement to build the first Copernicus mirror site in Southeast Asia in the Philippines. This new initiative will strengthen the Philippines’ response capacity and resilience to natural and man-made disasters through the strategic use of space data.
Source: scitechdaily.com
