The importance of the NOAA-AVHRR data in resources inventories and environmental monitoring in Argentina and neighboring countries

In the present paper some properties of the NOAA-AVHRR system and information are analysed. A description of the main characteristics of the vegetation of the southest region of South America and the surrounding ocean currents are presented. The applicability of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and the Sea Surface Temperature to monitor the vegetative cover and the ocean dynamics of the region is evaluated. The discussion is based in the presentation of several images generated with GAC and LAC data, showing the high performance of the NOAA-AVHRR system for this type of studies.