Satellite picture of the month – November – Xinjiang
The west of Xinjiang in China, photographed by the Sentinel-2A satellite on November 30, 2015
This false-color composite shows the west of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomus Region in China. The picture was generated from different spectral bands, based on Sentinel-2 data from the Copernicus Programme. The band combination we applied is useful for conducting vegetation analyses and offers a resolution of 20 meters. Healthy vegetation is depicted in loud shades of green and can be easily distinguished from the soil, which is colored in a spectrum ranging from gentle rose color (e.g. harvested fields) to vibrant pink (e.g. cleared rain forest). Water is painted in dark shades of blue and black, while cities are colored in hues ranging from light gray to light pink.
In the picture’s northwest one can discern the oasis city Kashgar, behind which the Silk Road bifurcated in order to circumvent the adjoining Tarim Basin via a northern or southern route. Kashgar was also the capital of the First East Turkestan Republic (1933-34), which lasted only a year. In the picture’s south east one can discern parts of the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert. The southwest depicts the foothills of the Pamir Mountains.