The Rhine, the longest river in Germany, appears in this colorful picture taken by sentry Copernicus 2 Along the river is Bonn, where this year's "life planet seminar" - one of the world's largest earth observation conferences - will be held from May 23 to 27, 2022. The week-long event focused on how earth observation can contribute to science and society, and how disruptive technologies and participants can change the traditional pattern of earth observation, which also created new opportunities for interaction between the public and private sectors.
The image shows the black Rhine flowing from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In the picture, the Rhine flows from the lower right to the upper left. This river is an important waterway with rich shipping traffic, transporting import and export goods from all over the world.
Bonn is a city on the Rhine River in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. Bonn is located about 24 kilometers (15 miles) south southeast of Cologne and at the southernmost end of Rhine Ruhr, Germany's largest metropolitan area. It is a university town and the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven.
The picturesque Rhine Valley has many forest covered hills with castles, including vineyards, ancient towns and villages along the river. A special section extending from Bingen in the south to Koblenz, called the Rhine Valley, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site (invisible), and the city of Cologne is visible at the top of the picture.
This composite image is composed of three independent normalized vegetation index (NDVI) layers of the Copernicus sentinel 2 mission. Normalized vegetation index is widely used in remote sensing because it provides scientists with an accurate method to measure the health and state of plant growth.
Each color in this week's image represents the average NDVI value for the whole season from 2018 to 2021. The hue of red describes the peak vegetation growth in April and may, green shows the changes in June and July, and blue shows the changes in August and September.
Cologne is one of the oldest cities in Germany. It is the largest city on the Rhine River and the most populous city in the Rhine Ruhr metropolitan area and Rhine region. It is the fourth most populous city in Germany and the largest city in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), Germany's most populous state.
Colored squares, especially visible on the left side of the image, show different crop types. The nearby white areas are forest areas. They look white because they maintain high NDVI values in most growing seasons, which is different from crops. Crops are planted and harvested within the specified time. The light pink area is grassland, while the dark area (with low NDVI value) is construction area and water body.