Biolowieza National Park lies on the border between Poland and Belarus. It was first established as a park in 1932, and restored in 1947 in the wake of the Second World War. The park was also declared a biosphere reserve in 1977. It is also a transboundary World Heritage site in conjunction with the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Biosphere Reserve adajacent to it on the Belarus side of the border. It is a section carved out of the much larger Bialowieza Forest: the park is slightly less than one fifth of the forest area. The Biolowieza Forest is a unique ecosystem: not only does it contain a rare European lowland old growth forest, but it also lies in a border zone between the boreal and temperate climate zones. Within its borders are some of the southernmost stands of boreal species such as the norway spruce. It also contains temperate species at their northernmost limits, such as sessile oak. The forest also contains a complex mosaic of plants and animals, including forest ungulates, birds of prey, and a wide assortment of vascular plants, mosses, lichens, and fungi. It is also the site of successful reintroduction of species including the European bison and beaver. The preservation of this area owes a great deal to its protection over several centuries from leading figures in central Europe, from Polish kings, Lithuanian princes and dukes, and the Russian Tsars. Their interest in maintaining the land focused on its leisure use as hunting grounds, but this also provided protection from most agricultural use and land clearing. Its national park status in the 20th century has further protected it from development, though areas around it have been subjected to conversion to commercial lumber industry. In the summer of 2003, a new management plan for the Bialowieza Forest called for removing trees in an effort to contain infestations of bark beetles. These new policies have been the subject of heated debate in the forestry and ecology communities, with conservationists accusing the government of clearing the most valuable timber under a dubious guise of forest protection, while government officials cite the plan as an example of sustainable forestry practices. Forest clearing and poor land practices in the adjacent land in Belarus, such as felling trees that are hosts for the bark beetle and failing to remove the logs promptly, continue to be a source of growing concern to ecologists as these last stands of primeval European forest are turned to commercial land use and pressures. In this scene, acquired on April 29, 2002, by the Terra satellite's ASTER instrument, many of these features can be discerned. The old palace grounds are quite evident, as are the clear cut areas in the Biolowieza Forest outside the park, whose boundaries are partially defined by the Lesna River and the international border with Belarus. The international boundary appears as the linear feature to the top right of this image where forest has been cleared along the border. This, image was created by combining red, near-infrared and green wavelengths (ASTER VNIR bands 2, 3, and 1). Image created from data collected by NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team Data processed by the American Museum of Natural History's Science Bulletins
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Title
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Description
Eighteen years ago, on April 26, 1986, the world's worst nuclear power accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the Ukrainian-Belarus border. Toxic radionuclides like Cs137 and Sr90 contaminated an area of 155,000 square kilometers in what is today Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, sickened from radiation-induced illnesses, or resettled to uncontaminated land. Today, the immediate area remains off limits to humans. The plant was permanently closed in 2000. The surrounding agricultural land has been abandoned, and the two nearby towns (Pripyat to the north and Chernobyl to the south) where plant workers lived are largely ghost towns. Instead of people, abundant wildlife—packs of wolves, deer, and birds—roam and live near Chernobyl. This image, taken seven years ago from the Russian Mir spacecraft, shows Chernobyl and the surrounding countryside. The power plant is situated on the northwest end of a cooling pond on the Pripyat River, which flows into the Dnepr River just 80 miles north of Kiev. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16519 ] The main features visible in the image are the massive concrete dams and levees that were constructed to contain elements of the power plant and prevent contaminated runoff from entering the local streams. The cooling water canals leading to the pond, and the levees in the middle of the pond that channeled the water circulation can also be seen. The darker green regions are forests and the light green areas are cleared land used for agriculture. Image NM23-745-116 [ http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=NM23&roll=745&frame=116 ] was taken April 27, 1997, from the Russian Mir Space Station with a Hasselblad medium format camera equipped with a 250-mm lens and is provided by the Earth Observations Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The NASA-Mir program was the first phase of the International Space Station Program, [ http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/ ] which now supports the Earth Observations Laboratory. The program trains astronauts to take pictures of Earth that are of value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. [ http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ ]
Fires in Northeastern Europe
Title
Fires in Northeastern Europe
Description
On March 24, 2003, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite captured this image of scattered fires (red dots) in northeastern Europe. Fires are most heavily concentrated in the Russian Federation (north of center) between Lithuania (north) and Poland (south). To the southeast, there are fires in Belarus (top) and Ukraine (bottom). At top left is the Baltic Sea. The high-resolution image provided above is 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at MODIS' maximum spatial resolution of 250 meters. Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
Flooding in Western Russia
Title
Flooding in Western Russia
Description
As the ground began to thaw and snow melted, the Dnieper River and its tributaries were swollen with spring run-off. According to news reports, the rivers had caused some damage as flood waters inundated small cities along their banks. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] (MODIS) on the Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured this image of the river system on April 4, 2004. Four major rivers are shown running into the Dnieper, the large river that forms the trunk of this tree-like structure. On the far right is the Desna River, with the Seym River branching off of it. The center right branch is formed by the Sozh River and its tributaries. The center left branch is the Dnieper, and running into it from the top left is the Byarezina River. The far left branch is formed by the Prypyats River. Complicating this tangle of flowing water, the borders of three countries snake along the rivers, sometimes following their flow, but often not. Russia is in the top right corner of the image, Ukraine forms the lower third, and Belarus is in the upper left corner. In the high-resolution image, Poland and Lithuania are visible along the left edge of the image, and Romania, Moldova, and the Black Sea sit on the lower edge. Here, fires are marked with red dots. The fires were likely started by farmers clearing their fields for spring planting. This false-color image shows vegetation as green, bare ground as tan and pink, and clouds in light blue. Water is black and dark blue. The high-resolution image provided above has a resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The image is available in additional resolutions [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?2004095-0404/Russia.A2004095.1105.721 ], including MODIS' maximum resolution of 250 meters per pixel. Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] at NASA GSFC.
Astronomer's Moon
Title
Astronomer's Moon
Explanation
Jupiter is [ http://www.nineplanets.org/jupiter.html ] an astronomer's planet -- its large size and contrasting global cloud belts and zones [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030906.html ] allow detailed studies with a range of earthbound telescopes [ http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/alpo/ ]. On the other hand, most telescopic views of Jupiter's moons [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030227.html ] usually show only featureless, tantalizing points of light hovering near the ruling gas giant. But this impressive picture from a small, ground-based telescope reveals a stunning amount of detail [ http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/ Number/1752001/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1 ] on Ganymede, a jovian moon about the same size as Earth's moon but at least 1,500 times farther away. The image was carefully constructed by combining and processing only the 409 sharpest frames from a total of 10,000 recorded at 30 frames per second by a digital camera. Ganymede's [ http://www.nineplanets.org/ganymede.html ] radius is about 2,600 kilometers indicating that the surface markings [ http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=503&vbody=399 &month=6&day=30&year=2007&hour=20&minute=05&rfov=2&fovmul=-1&bfov=30 &porbs=1&showsc=1 ] visible are as small as around 900 kilometers across.
Nuclear Meltdown
The abandoned city of Pripya
…
Description
The abandoned city of Pripyat, home to the infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, lies on the Pripyat River in northern Ukraine, near the Belarus boarder. Three days after the April 26, 1986, nuclear accident, Landsat 5 acquired this image of the region. The power plant explosion and ensuing fire released highly radioactive nuclear fallout into the atmosphere, affecting region tens to hundreds of miles from the plant. This natural color Landsat 5 image uses TM bands 3,2,1.
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