On May 2, 2007, a pocket of thick haze formed over Sichuan Province in central China. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture the same day. In this image, haze forms between the Longmen Shan and Xiaoxiang Ling mountain ranges in the west, and the Dalou Shan mountains in the east.
Sichuan Province includes panda bear habitat. Pandas rely on temperate broadleaf and mixed forests east of the Tibetan Plateau. By 2005, the Chinese government had established more than 50 panda reserves, protecting almost half of the world’s remaining habitat for these bears.
You can download a 250-meter-resolution central China KMZ file for use with Google Earth.
References & Resources
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team.
