This image over a remote area in southern Iran was acquired by Japan’s ALOS satellite on 10 December 2009.
To the west we can see the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between the Gulf of Oman to the south and Persian Gulf to the north. The brown areas along the coast are sediments carried from rivers that flow only after erratic rainfall in the interior, usually in the winter months.
On the whole, the area pictured is extremely arid, as evident by the lack of vegetation. But in the upper left and slightly inland, we can see a green area that appears to be standing water from a human-made dam on the river.
The dark zones along the coast are wetlands at the deltas of the Rud-e-Gaz and Rud-e-Hara rivers. This extensive complex of tidal mudflats, creeks, salt marshes, mangroves, sandbanks and offshore islands is an important site for wintering waterbirds.
This is just one of the over 2000 sites worldwide considered to be wetlands of international importance by the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental treaty for the sustainable use of wetlands.
Dedicated ESA programs assist the convention by providing satellite data to be used to monitor these important areas. With their repeating global coverage, satellites are ideal for imaging remote areas that require monitoring – like the wetland pictured here.
This picture is featured on the Earth from Space video program.
Image credit: JAXA/ESA
This false-color satellite image shows the Kumbunbur Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory, about 260 km southwest of the city of Darwin.
The green ‘branches’ of what looks like a tree are the waterways of runoff that flow into the Timor Sea (not pictured).
The false-color makes vegetation appear bright red, and we can clearly see how vegetation grows mainly along the waterways. Vegetation is more evenly dispersed across the plain to the north.
The image was captured by the Kompsat-2 satellite on 20 September 2011, near the end of the dry season. The dry areas with a somewhat dull color in this image become flooded mudflats during the rainy season.
The rainy season occurs during a tropical area’s summer months because of increased heat from the Sun’s more direct impact angle. Higher temperatures lead to an increase in evaporation and rising, warm air masses. This air expands and cools, leading to the formation of cumulus clouds, and almost daily rainfall and thunderstorms.
As seasons change, the location of these rainfalls travels to areas with the highest Sun impact angles, resulting in wet and dry seasons in different zones of the tropics.
The tropics are the region of Earth north and south of the equator. Some areas of northern Australia are part of the tropical climate zone.
This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.
Image credit: KARI/ESA
This image acquired on 3 May 2012 from the Pleiades satellite shows the island of Mont Saint Michel and its surrounding bay in northwest France. Mont Saint Michel was a tidal island, meaning that it was surrounded by water at high tide and only when the waters receded was it reachable by foot. In the late 1800s, the causeway was raised to make it accessible from the mainland at all times. In this image, we can clearly see where the water meets the mud flats, with multiple channels weaving through the mud.
Photo credit: CNES 2012/Astrium Services/Spot Image
