Lignite mines in North Rhine-Westphalia

Sentinel-2 MSI acquired on 15 October 2017 at 10:40:09 UTC
Sentinel-1 CSAR IW acquired on 15 November 2017 at 05:49:40 UTC
Author(s): Sentinel Vision team, VisioTerra, France - svp@visioterra.fr
Keyword(s): Land, climate change, fossile energy, open pit mine, Germany
Fig. 1 - S1 (15.11.2017) - vv,vh,ndi(vh,vv) colour composite - South-west of North Rhine-Westphalia between Düsseldorf, Cologne & Aachen.
Germany is the World's 1st producer of lignite (brown coal), it reached its peak production in 2012 after it decided to phase-out nuclear power.
Fig. 2 - S2 (15.10.2017) - 11,8,2 colour composite - 3 giant open-pit lignite mines (red) & their power plants (magenta).
Fig. 3 - S1 - vv,vh,ndi(vh,vv) colour composite - The 66km² Tagebau Garzweiler mine should have a 48km² extension.
Fig. 4 - S2 - 4,3,2 natural colour - The 45km² Hambach mine reaches -299m below sea (its 220m-long excavators are circled).