Landsat ETM+ False-Color Image Mosaics of Afghanistan

In 2005, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Trade and
Development Agency contracted with the U.S. Geological Survey to perform
assessments of the natural resources within Afghanistan. The assessments
concentrate on the resources that are related to the economic development of
that country. Therefore, assessments were initiated in oil and gas, coal,
mineral resources, water resources, and earthquake hazards. All of these
assessments require geologic, structural, and topographic information
throughout the country at a finer scale and better accuracy than that provided
by the existing maps, which were published in the 1970's by the Russians and
Germans. The very rugged terrain in Afghanistan, the large scale of these
assessments, and the terrorist threat in Afghanistan indicated that the best
approach to provide the preliminary assessments was to use remotely sensed,
satellite image data, although this may also apply to subsequent phases of the
assessments. Therefore, the first step in the assessment process was to produce
satellite image mosaics of Afghanistan that would be useful for these
assessments. This report discusses the production of the Landsat false-color
image database produced for these assessments, which was produced from the
calibrated Landsat ETM+ image mosaics described by Davis (2006).

[Summary provided by the USGS.]