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Fig. 24 | Ecological Processes

Fig. 24

From: Current and near-term advances in Earth observation for ecological applications

Fig. 24

Illustration of mapping mineral exposures in arid and semiarid sites that are sources for airborne dust that gets into the upper troposphere and stratosphere, absorbing or reflecting soil radiation, thus affecting the radiation budget of the earth. While the true color image makes the area look to be composed of similar geologic minerals (being different tones of gray), but when locations of surface minerals are color coded and mapped, the complex surface minerology is evident. In this example, the hematite and goethtite minerals are dark and absorb more solar energy while the carbonates and clay minerals are light-colored and absorb less energy, and scatter energy back toward space. Data was acquired for this example on 03/31/2014 by the Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) over the Salton Sea, California, flown on the NASA ER-2 aircraft at 30 km altitude (Baradley et al. 2020)

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