Images

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.

Modern paleontology began with the 1858 discovery by William Parker Foulke at Haddonfield, New Jersey of the nearly complete skeleton of a dinosaur called Hadrosaurus.

Capital Trenton

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 9,288,994

Did you know that nearly 50 percent of the United States population lives within a 500-mile radius of Columbus, Ohio? Columbus is the state capital and Ohio’s largest city. It is also home to The Ohio State University.

Capital Columbus

Image Source Landsat 8

An animation of the growth of a solar farm, created using Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection data.

Animation of Twelvemile Lake in the Yukon Flats ecoregion in Alaska, created using USGS Landsat data.

(A) The Creek Fire perimeter within the San Carlos Apache Reservation in east-central Arizona and (B) the various fuel treatments within the Creek Fire boundary, using the boundary in Wu et al.

Six flags have flown over Texas: Spain, France, United Mexican States, Confederate States of America, the Republic of Texas, and the United States of America, with eight changes of government.

Capital Austin

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 29,145,505

Animation of land cover change in the Black Hills, created using Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection data from the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center.

Map of Alaska showing probability (%) of change occurrence. Insets show fire boundaries from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Large Fire Database and Landsat 8 imagery (bottom right; 2016) north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Center pivot irrigation fields in the Arabian Desert are visible in this Landsat 8 image near Meegowa, Saudi Arabia. The image was acquired on Oct 10, 2018 and is shown in a color infrared band combination (Bands 5,4,3).

LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Type imagery.

The FPI is most similar to the Energy Release Component of the National Fire Danger Rating System in that both are moisture related indexes and neither indicates the effect of wind on fire potential. 

Africa, the second largest continent, is a mix of steamy rainforests, vast grasslands, and arid deserts. It has no long mountain ranges, but is home to the world's largest hot desert, the Sahara, and its longest river, the Nile. The featured area is the central South Atlantic coastal region of Namibia, including the cities of Walvis Bay and Windhoek.

Snow-capped Colima Volcano, the most active volcano in Mexico, rises abruptly from the surrounding landscape in the state of Jalisco. Colima is actually a melding of two volcanoes, the older Nevado de Colima to the north and the younger, historically active Volcan de Colima to the south. Legend has it that gods sit atop the volcano on thrones of fire and ice.

Australia is the smallest, and flattest, of all the continents. Its surface details are largely the result of erosion. Many rivers drain into the continent's harsh, arid interior, where they terminate in salt lakes that are dry for most of the year.

The MacDonnell Ranges are a band of mountains spanning Australia's arid interior. Only a portion of the Ranges can be seen in this image.

Surrounded by sand dunes, Lake Disappointment is an ephemeral salt lake in one of the most remote areas of Western Australia. An early explorer supposedly named the lake in 1897 after following a number of creeks that he thought would lead to a large lake; they did, but the lake's extremely salty water was not drinkable.

USDA Forest Service and California state firefighters work together in a night operation to push back a fire line at the Donnell Fire in Stanislaus National Forest, California. Forest Service photo by Cecilio Ricardo

Landsat 5 captured this image of the Tampa Bay, Florida area on March 22, 1991.  

Bands 7,2,1 

Image processed at Center for Coastal Geology, St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Landsat archive has added its 8 millionth scene. This stunning image was captured by Landsat 8 on July 28, 2018. It shows the coastline of Nordaustlandet, the second-largest island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.