Landsat ETM+ False-Color Image Mosaics of Afghanistan

The assessments concentrate on the resources that are related to the economic development of that country. Therefore, assessments were initiated in oil and gas, coal, mineral resources, water resources, and earthquake hazards.

All of these assessments require geologic, structural, and topographic information throughout the country at a finer scale and better accuracy than that provided by the existing maps, which were published in the 1970's by the Russians and Germans. The very rugged terrain in Afghanistan, the large scale of these assessments, and the terrorist threat in Afghanistan indicated that the best approach to provide the preliminary assessments was to use remotely sensed, satellite image data, although this may also apply to subsequent phases of the assessments.