Satellite Captures Glowing Plants From Space

sciencehabit writes About 1% of the light that strikes plants is re-emitted as a faint, fluorescent glow—a measure of photosynthetic activity. Today, scientists released a map of this glow as measured by the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, a NASA satellite launched in July with the goal of mapping the net amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The map reveals that tropical rainforests near the equator are actively sucking up carbon, while the Corn Belt in the eastern United States, near the end of its growing season, is also a sink. Higher resolution fluorescence mapping could one day be used to help assess crop yields and how they respond to drought and heat in a changing climate.

Comments

NASA link

[Dan East]

Here is a higher resolution version of the map:
http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/oco2/p...

I live in an orange area of the US, and it's not the "corn belt" either, but the Appalachians.