Exploring the Geomorphology of the Amazon’s Planalto with Imaging Radar:

Understanding the Origins of the Modern Amazon Basin.

Rehnuma Islam, City College of New York, islamrehnuma@gmail.com (Presenter)
Kyle C McDonald, City College of New York, kmcdonald2@ccny.cuny.edu
Marzi Azarderakhsh, City College of New York, mazarderakhsh@gmail.com
Ana Carolina Carnaval, City College of New York, carolinacarnaval@gmail.com
Kenneth E Campbell, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, kcampbell@nhm.org
Joel Cracraft, American Museum and Natural History, jlc@amnh.org

The Amazon basin is a biodiversity rich biome and plays a significant role into shaping the earth’s climate, ocean and atmospheric gases. Understanding the history of the formation of this basin is essential to our understanding of the region’s biodiversity loss and response to climate change. Ancient River channels in lowland Amazonia exhibit complex and variable branching structures as well as intricately intertwined channels. These formations may provide important clues to our understanding of the structural characteristic of Amazonia through deep time. Past research has argued that these characteristics may result from subsurface faults. However the dense vegetation cover and sedimentation make it difficult to validate these arguments. We seek to employ remote sensing techniques for examining geomorphological features and the relationship to evolutionary processes that shaped biodiversity in the modern Amazon River Basin.

During springtime 2013, the NASA/JPL airborne imaging radar, UAVSAR, conducted airborne studies over many regions of South America including portions of the western Amazon basin. We utilize UAVSAR imagery acquired over the Planalto, in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru in an assessment of the underlying geomorphology, its relationship to the current distribution of vegetation, and its relationship to geologic processes through deep time. In the late Neogene, the Amazonian lowlands comprised either a series of independent basins or a single sedimentary basin. The Amazonian Planalto is variously described as either an erosional surface or a surface of deposition. We employ UAVSAR data collections to assess (1) The utility of these high quality imaging radar data for use in identifying associated geomorphologic features, and (2) UAVSAR’s utility in aiding interpretation of ALOS PALSAR and SRTM datasets to support a basin-wide characterization. We derive maps of river networks by extracting the linear features from the UAVSAR backscatter images and utilize these maps to assess river branching structure. Results will provide an understanding of the underlying geomorphology of the Amazon Planalto as well as its relationship to geologic processes. The results of the analysis will have a major impact on interpretation of the evolutionary history of the Amazon Basin.

We are grateful to Naira Pinto and the JPL UAVSAR team for supporting the planning and acquisition of the UAVSAR data, and to the NASA Biodiversity Program for providing funding to support the UAVSAR acquisitions. Portions of this work were carried out within the framework of the JAXA Kyoto and Carbon Initiative. PALSAR data have been provided by JAXA EORC and the Alaska Satellite Facility. This work was carried out under a grant from the NASA Biodiversity Program and the NSF DIMENSIONS of Biodiversity Program.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  General Contributions   (Tue 4:35 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• McDonald, Kyle: Vegetation Phenology Assessment Using Satellite Radar Remote Sensing: Global Monitoring of Daily and Seasonal Changes in Canopy Structure and Water Status ...details
• Related Activity: Related Activity or Previously Funded CC&E Activity not listed ...details

Poster Location ID: 163