Biomass sees through rainforest

ESA revealed the first stunning images from its groundbreaking Biomass satellite mission – marking a major leap forward in our ability to understand how Earth’s forests are changing and exactly how they contribute to the global carbon cycle.

This the very first image that Biomass returned. Captured on 22 May 2025, this image offers a striking view of the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil. In the southern part of the image, pink and red hues reveal the presence of wetlands, highlighting Biomass’ ability to penetrate dense vegetation and detect features down to the forest floor. The dominance of red tones along river indicates forested floodplains, while the northern area, depicted in rich green, reveals more rugged topography and dense, continuous forest cover.

The image spans approximately 100 km along the Biomass satellite's flight path (length) and 60 km across in width, with north oriented to the top.

The Biomass synthetic aperture operates continuously in fully polarimetric imaging mode, capturing all four linear polarisation combination: HH, HV, VH, and VV. The resulting images are displayed using a Pauli decomposition in RGB format, where different scattering mechanisms are represented by specific colours: blue corresponds to single-bounce surface scattering, red to double-bounce scattering, and green to multiple-bounce interactions, which are indicative of volume scattering within the forest canopy.

Read full story: Biomass satellite returns striking first images of forests and more