Taklamakan Desert
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The Taklamakan Desert is a desert in Southwest Xinjiang in Northwest China. This is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world. The desert’s natural conditions are adverse, and there are serious hazards from wind-drift sand. The area is characterized by a dry climate, low rainfall, and high evaporation. There is little variation in color and intensity across the area. The desert has an area about 960 km from west to east, and it has a maximum width of 420 km. The desert has elevations of 1,200 to 1,500 m above sea level in the west and south and from 800 to 1,000 m in the east and north.
The desert site has been used for the cross-calibration activities of the Remote Sensing Instrument (RSI) onboard Formosat-2. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) onboard Terra was used as a reference [2]. The site has also been used for absolute radiometric calibration [3].
| Location (City, State, Country): |
Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang, China
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| Landsat WRS - 2 Path / Row: |
146/32
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| Center Latitude (degrees): |
N 39.83
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| Center Longitude (degrees): |
E 80.17
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| CEOS Region of Interest |
N 39.82, E 80.17 Search this area in EarthExplorer (Landsat 8-9 Collection 2 Level-1) - date range, datasets, cloud cover and other criteria can be modified once initial results are returned |
| Size of Usable Area (km): |
25 x 25
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| Altitude above sea level (meters): |
1079
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| Purpose: |
Radiometry
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| Status: |
Active
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- Fanglin Shi, Jinyuan Xin, Leiku Yang, Zhiyuan Cong, Ruixia Liu, Yining Ma, Yuesi Wang, Xiaofeng Lu, Lei Zhao, The first validation of the precipitable water vapor of multisensor satellites over the typical regions in China, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 206, 2018, Pages 107-122, ISSN 0034-4257, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.12.022.
- Kamei, Akihide, Kazuki Nakamura, Hirokazu Yamamoto, Ryosuke Nakamura, Satoshi Tsuchida, Naotaka Yamamoto, Satoshi Sekiguchi et al. "Cross calibration of formosat-2 remote sensing instrument (rsi) using terra advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (aster)." IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing 50, no. 11 (2012): 4821-4831.
- Wilson, Nicholas, Joshua Greenberg, Arin Jumpasut, Alan Collison, and Horst Weichelt. "Absolute Radiometric Calibration of Planet Dove Satellites, Flocks 2p & 2e." Planet: San Francisco, CA, USA (2017).
Note: This information has been compiled by the USGS ECCOE Team, using the best sources currently known. Updates will be made as more information becomes available. Please contact eccoe@usgs.gov with any updates you would like to contribute.