The history of sea islands in the Altamaha River delta on the coast of Georgia is revealed in this image produced from data acquired by the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR), developed and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The outlines of long-lost plantation rice fields, canals, dikes and other inlets are clearly visible, as are Rhett's and Butler's islands, names made famous by novelist Margaret Mitchell in "Gone with the Wind."
The image is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/airsar/ .
The ability of imaging radar to detect vegetation canopy density, hydrological features and other topographic characteristics make it a very useful tool in landscape archaeology. More information about AIRSAR is available at http://airsar.jpl.nasa.gov . AIRSAR is part of NASA's Earth Enterprise program. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.