The ERS-1 Central Africa Mosaic: a new role for radar remote sensing in global studies of the tropical ecosystem

The Central Africa Mosaic project-CAMP-is an attempt to bring spaceborne SAR remote sensing into an entirely new perspective for global studies of the tropical ecosystem. The new approach hinges around the concept of multi-resolution information extraction, whereby using a high resolution radar sensor one can obtain information both at large geographical scale and at fine spatial detail; the access point to the data hierarchy-or the level of detail needed-is driven by the thematic application. CAMP consists of more than 450 ERS-1 SAR scenes, which were acquired on demand and in a short time frame (two months) over the entire Central African continent by the ESA Libreville ground station and correlated by the German PAF at DLR. The project is carried out by the European Commission Space Applications Institute MTV unit at Ispra and within the R/D activity of TREES (Tropical Ecosystem Environment Monitoring by Satellites). In this communication the basic concepts underlying the CAMP project are first summarized; aspects related to the thematic interpretation, the data processing and new initiatives for large scale radar maps are then discussed with emphasis on peculiarities of the CAMP approach.