This Landsat image of 3 October 2011 shows the Mississippi River Delta, where the largest river in the United States empties into the Gulf of Mexico. In this false-color image, land vegetation appears pink, while the sediment in the surrounding waters are bright blue and green.
The Yarlung Zangpo Grand Canyon (or Tsangpo Gorge) in Tibet is the deepest canyon in the world, and longer than the Grand Canyon. As the river passes between the peaks of Namcha Barwa (7,782 m) and Gyala Peri (7,234 m) it reaches a maximum depth of 6,009 m. In 2002, seven kayakers were the first westerners to navigate the entire gorge. The image was acquired February 25, 2004, and is located near 29.7 degrees north latitude, 95 degrees east longitude.
Evolution of ground deformation over Nea Kameni Volcano (Santorini, Greece) from March 2011 to February 2012. The animation was derived using data from Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar analysis of Envisat’s radar data.
The Livermore and Spring Ranch fires near the Davis Mountains Resort, Texas, burned 13,000 and 11,000 acres respectively. The fires started on April 21, 2012, by dry lightning. By May 12, when this image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft was acquired, both fires were contained, and management had been turned over to local authorities. The image shows healthy vegetation in red, burned areas in black, and bare ground in blue-gray and yellow-tan. The image covers an area of 13.6 by 17.8 miles (22 by 28.5 kilometers) and is located at 30.7 degrees north latitude, 104.2 degrees west longitude.
The Three Gorges Dam spans the Yangtze River in east-central China, and is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity, with its vast reservoir stretching for 660 km. Since its completion in 2008, over 1.3 million people were relocated; 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1350 villages were submerged; and the cost of the project exceeded $40 billion. According to the BBC News, landslides and bank collapses upriver from the dam may force authorities to move another 100,000 people. The image was acquired June 24, 2009, and is located at 30.8 degrees north latitude, 111 degrees east longitude.
This animation shows two images of northern France acquired by two different instruments on the Envisat satellite: MERIS and the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer.
The first image, acquired on 20 February 2012, shows Paris in the center. The river flowing through the city and into the English Channel is the Seine. East of Paris, vineyards and fields of the famous Champagne-Ardenne region appear lighter in color. The second radiometer image, acquired on 23 May 2011, shows heat, with yellows and reds depicting higher temperatures compared to the cooler blue areas. In this image, urban areas south of Paris – such as Orléans – stand out.
The eastern end of the Gulf of Fonseca, in Honduras, was originally the site of extensive wetlands ecosystem, dominated by six species of mangroves. In 1986 (right image), the Landsat Thematic Mapper shows an environment minimally impacted by human activities. By 2009, when the ASTER image was acquired (left), hundreds of square kilometers of coastal swamps had been converted to shrimp ponds, appearing as blue rectangles near the water line. The images cover an area of 30 x 36 km, and are located at 13 degrees north latitude, 87.2 degrees west longitude.
