Landslide Assessment & Prevention of Future Risks
Monts BAMBOUTOS, CAMEROON

New views from space (TERRA-1 ASTER, March 2004)

The TERRA-1 ASTER image shown below has been acquired on March 8, 2004 (Courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory, GSFC). It covers the area of the Bamboutos Mountains in Cameroon, which had already heavily suffered of an important series of landslides in July 2003 (rain season).

This image has been processed at its original spatial resolution of 15 meters x 15 meters. It is shown here at both 30 x 30 meters, and 15 x 15 meters spatial resolution. It has been orthorectified and radiometrically corrected using the Digital Elevation Model built using the RADARSAT-1 and ERS-1 SAR (radar) images.

The subset of this satellite image (spectral bands 4, 3 and 2), which is shown below, covers an area of 22.5 x 22.5 kilometers.
It shows the great caldera of the Monts Bamboutos, the remnant of a 17 million years old volcano, now collapsed.

Results from March 2004 :

Potential landslides inside the caldera are marked at the center of the red squares.

Comparison to the risk evaluation in January 2004 :

The preliminary evaluation of the damages, as observed on the field in the beginning of this year (2004), may be compared to the analysis of this high-resolution processed March 2004 ASTER image :