Earth As Art 6

Rupert Bay, an arm of James Bay, extends into Quebec, Canada. Many rivers carry sediment into the bay and combine with seawater coming in from the tide. A prominent sediment stream extends past Stag Island and a vortex curls off Stag Rock in the middle of the bay.

Jebel Kissu, in northwestern Sudan, emerges abruptly like an island in the vast Sahara Desert. The plateau is the eroded remnant of a granite dome. The bright linear features are truck tracks, common in the Sahara where there are no paved roads.

A bit of blue cubism in southern Uzbekistan highlights the intensive irrigation that is common along rivers that flow into the Aral Sea. However, so much water is used for irrigation that very little actually reaches the Aral Sea.

Water from the Balkh River fans out into an agricultural area toward an arid region in northern Afghanistan, near the border with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Part of an ancient region called Bactria, extensive irrigation produces melons, almonds, apricots, and grains. Mazar-e Sharif is the urban area that dominates the lower right corner of the image.

This natural landscape might appear more like a medical illustration of itchy nerve endings. In Western Sahara, Africa, an intense network of wadis drains toward the west, eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean. These drainage courses are almost always dry in this remote part of the Sahara Desert.

Rock folding on a tectonic scale occurred in northwestern Africa. These motley ribbons dancing across the desert in Morocco are folds caused by the prolonged collision of tectonic plates. The long continuous line is Jbel Ouarkziz, a ridge that rises 200–300 meters above the valley floors.

Resembling choppy waters in a rough sea, this image is an infrared exposition of a sand sea in Namibia. Sand dunes surround a crescent-shaped rocky hill. This inselberg is hard rock that resisted the erosion that took place over time around it. The inselberg disrupts the deposition of sand, changing the dune pattern.

One glacier on Russian islands in the Arctic Ocean surprised scientists with its rapid change. After decades of normal, slow movement, a glacier draining Vavilov Ice Cap sprang forward, accelerating rapidly after 2013. This fast movement is extremely rare for cold-based glaciers. In 5 years, the ice tongue doubled in size.

Seventeen rivers flow into the Bangweulu Wetlands in Zambia, but only one drains out. Green tendrils randomly sweep through the image, a landscape dominated by various grasslands, open water, and dense Papyrus grass and Phragmites reeds. The entire wetland covers an area about the size of Connecticut.

The Lake Eyre Basin is one of the driest places in Australia. But this image features a rare green flush to this otherwise parched landscape. Streams and creeks that drain into the basin are usually dry, but storms in March 2018 delivered water to these braided channels. By April, the floodwater had receded and left a green expanse behind.

Near the Queen Fabiola Mountains, also called the Yamato Mountains, is a classic example of blue ice in Antarctica. Blue ice emerges where wind scours glaciers clean of snow and forms when air bubbles are squeezed out of layers of partially compacted snow left over from previous seasons. The ice appears blue because red and yellow wavelengths of light are absorbed.

Wetlands have a unique beauty when viewed from above. This natural color drone image shows the intricate interactions of forest and surface water in this high-altitude wetland called a fen in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Wetlands enhance water quality and provide habitats for diverse plant and animal species.

A frantic-looking scene in northeastern Ethiopia shows the location of three tectonic plates shifting away from each other. In this region, Earth’s crust is rifting at 1 to 2 centimeters per year. New fissures opened in the Erta Ale shield volcano in January 2017, and this image from March 2017 shows the locations of the fresh lava.

Red and black seem to mar the icy glacial landscape of southern Iceland. The gray-black filaments are past glacial melting outbursts called jökulhlaups. These abrupt flooding events gush down this outwash plain called Skeiðarársandur, one of the world’s largest. The Skeiðarárjökull Glacier reaches down from the top left of the image.

Palmyra Atoll is an ancient volcanic remnant located about 1,000 miles from Hawaii. The Nature Conservancy, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, manages the atoll as a science and research station. Multispectral sensors on drones efficiently capture high-resolution images of land and coral reefs.

Algal blooms occur annually on Milford Lake in the summer and can be harmful to fragile wetland ecosystems. The USGS Kansas Water Science Center uses multispectral sensors on board drones to identify harmful algal blooms and study how they affect local businesses and human and animal health.

A mesmerizing plume creates a paradox of light and dark, brilliant and murky. The dark water of the Suwannee River flows from the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to the Gulf of America in Florida. The river’s inky color comes from decaying vegetation at the river’s swampy source.