August 13, 2022 - Southeastern Brazil

Rio de Janiero, Brazil
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Forested highlands, long coastlines, and the metropolitan are of Rio de
Janeiro dominate the landscape of southeastern Brazil. The Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) acquired a true-color
image of the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espiritu Santo, and the part of
eastern Minas Gerais.

A large swatch of brown-gray pixels marks the city of Rio de Janeiro,
the second-largest city in Brazil and home to about 13,634,000 people.
The city’s full name is Cidade de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro,
which translates as “City of Saint Sebastian of River of January”—but
it normally goes by the popular nickname of, simply, Rio. The location
on the west shore of Guanabara bay led the Portuguese explorers who
explored the area in January, 1502, to think they had found the mouth
of an amazing river, and this led to the name “River of January”.

The land north of Rio is dominated by highlands and rolling hills
leading to the Espinhaço Mountains. At one time, several hundred years
ago, the hills along the Atlantic coastal region were covered in
tropical forest. Today, the ancient Atlantic Forest is only a
fragmented patchwork of undisturbed forest, cut by highways, farms,
pastures, and cities. Efforts are underway to replant some of the
forested area. Remnant Atlantic Forest, along with newly regenerated
forest appears dark green.

Much of southeastern Brazil’s coastlines are line by white sand
beaches, which are alluring to tourists as well as vacationing locals.
Two world-famous beaches include Copacabana, which sits on the first
scallop of coastline on the western shore of Guanabara Bay and Ipanema,
which sits on the Atlantic Ocean just west of Guanabara Bay in south
zone of the city of Rio.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 8/5/2022
Resolutions: 1km (222.4 KB), 500m (599.9 KB), 250m (393.6
KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-08-13

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