Fluorescence Visualizations in High-Resolution
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
- View full credits
During photosynthesis, plants emit fluorescence – a form of light invisible to the naked eye but detectable by satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth. NASA scientists established a method to turn this satellite data into global maps of the subtle phenomenon in more detail than ever before.
The new maps, released in 2013, provide a 16-fold increase in spatial resolution and a 3-fold increase in temporal resolution over the first proof-of-concept maps released in 2011. This lets scientists use fluorescence to observe, for example, variation in the length of the growing season.
A visualization of the phenomenon shows global land plant fluorescence data collected from 2007 to 2011, combined to depict a single average year. Gray indicates regions with little or no fluorescence; red, pink and white indicate regions of high fluorescence.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animator
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
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Writer
- Kathryn Hansen (SSAI)
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Scientist
- Joanna Joiner (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
Datasets used in this visualization
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MetOp GOME-2 Solar Induced Fluorescence at 740 nm
ID: 792
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.