Vaguely resembling a giant sea turtle, Barro Colorado Island is a heavily forested patch of land rising up out of the waters of Gatun Lake, situated at the northern end of the Panama Canal. The island is the focus of the JASON Project's Expedition XV ( www.jason.org/ ''Rainforests at the Crossroads'' ), in which students, teachers, and scientists will conduct a detailed examination of the rainforest ecosystem. The expedition will be televised to the international network of JASON schools, and an interactive lesson featuring the use of NASA satellite remote sensing data is /Laboratory/ICE/panama/panama.php now available on the Earth Observatory. The true-color scene above was acquired on March 29, 2002, by the DigitalGlobe Corporation's QuickBird satellite. At better than 1-meter resolution, the satellite reveals Barro Colorado Island in stunning detail. Several small cumulus clouds float silently over the western portion of the island, casting shadows on the surface. A ship can be seen cruising past the island's northeastern shore. The red roofs of the www.si.edu/archives/historic/stri.htm Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute can be seen peeking through the dark green canopy just inland from the bay to the south of the ship's position. Barro Colorado Island has been managed since 1924 by the Smithsonian Institute and is one of the premier sites in the world for study of tropical forests and the plants and animals that inhabit them. At this resolution, one can easily spot the many Guayacan trees blooming all over the island. The trees' canopies fill up with bright yellow blossoms, appearing as bright yellow splotches in this scene. According to tropical ecologists, the first showers of the rainy season cause the Guayacans to flower.
