Data Problems > Image Blemishes > Swaths

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Current count: 78 regular + 21 patterned = 99

Swaths are image blemishes, not data errors. Only new images can remove them.

• They are only on TerraMetrics 15-meter background images which are not known to be updated. They can be covered with higher resolution images.
• Straight lines pointing West by Northwest at angles of between 7° 50' and 9°
• Very straight edges, unlike aircraft contrails with irregular cloud edges
• Widths of about 1/2 kilometer. Lengths of 100+ kilometers.
• In bands of latitude at intervals of about 1° 30'
• There is no convincing explanation for these image faults.
• These appear identically in Microsoft's Windows Virtual Earth maps.
• Most are are bands of single colors
  
• 10% are in various complex patterns
  

Each is traced to permit detection of global patterns.
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• Antarctica: 10
• Algeria: 1
• Argentina: 1
• Bolivia-Brazil border: 1
• Brazil: 4
• Canada: 2 patterned and 6 others
• Chad: 4
• Chile: 2
• China: 3
• Côte d'Ivoire-Ghana border 1 patterned
• Greenland: 7
• India: 1
• Kazakhistan: 2
• Kyrgystan: 2 patterned and 3 others
• Mongolia: 2
• Nigeria: 2
• Pakistan: 5
• Peru: 5
• Russia: 16 patterned and 11 others
• Saudi Arabia: 1
• Sudan: 6
• USA: 1

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Misaligned Swaths

These differ from the above swaths because there are no unusual colorations or patterns. Rather, they are strips of shifted imagery about half a kilometer wide which stretch up to 170 kilometers. Their misalignments vary up to 200 meters. The discovery came about while studying Brazil's Rio Curu�a river slippage (24 March 2006) for illustration.

The shifted swaths only occur in the TerraMetrics low-resolution background imagery. We have found 4 in Peru and 2 in Brazil, and the shifts are ALSO found in Microsoft's Virtual Earth AND in Yahoo Maps.

The effects are most visible where the swaths cross a river: Rio Curu�a in Brazil, Rio Javan on the border, and Rio Amazonas in Peru We illustrate where some of the swaths cross the Amazon River in Peru.