A legendary lost city found in the Honduran tropical forest using ERS-2 and JERS-1 SAR imagery

Located in the remote, impenetrable and incompletely mapped rainforest of the Mosquito Coast, the legendary “Ciudad Blanca” of Honduras was never conquered by the Spanish. With time, it was slowly forgotten. JERS-1 and ERS-2 SAR images are used to identify and to locate the lost city, a task made difficult due to the thick vegetation cover. Among the techniques used to detect artificial targets under forest cover, new Bayesian speckle filters, particularly suited for the restoration of a strongly, mixed textured scene, are used to enhance the SAR images. In addition, radargrammetric techniques are used to produce a digital elevation model (DEM) of the study area; and to fuse ERS and JERS information to allow easier visual identification of the remnants of “Ciudad Blanca” by visual photo-interpretation. Using the processed images, geocoded UTM spatio-maps of the region are also produced