Images

Soft colors contrast with harsh terrain in southwestern Saudi Arabia, near the border with Yemen. Calming blues and purples seem to collide with an angry orange in this rich tapestry of colors, which are the result of the region’s complex geology. The wild shapes in this busy landscape lie in a region known as the Asharah fault zone.

Fluorescent colors dominate this dreamlike scene. The orange shapes look like glowfish in a fanciful underwater world. Those glowfish are actually clouds, and the neon green represents mountains, including Mount Rainier, near Seattle, Washington.

In a remote part of the Western Desert in central Egypt, highly eroded plateaus rise from the desert floor. The bright speckles are ancient dry lakes, the salt deposits reflecting brightly. Long ago, water flowed off the plateau, forming the breaches seen on the plateaus’ edges. This desolate land between oases is surrounded by extensive sand dunes.

These orange shades and ragged shapes give an impression of moodiness. The jagged scars are extensive valleys carved by water flowing from the Andes Mountains in northern Chile. The crater in the lower right is the volcano Cerro Guachiscota.

The northern end of Isla Isabela in the Galapagos looks like a seahorse with warts—with an eye painted in the ancient Egyptian style. The island was formed by the merger of six volcanoes. Wolf Volcano is the prominent one in the center; Ecuador Volcano is the one that forms the seahorse’s mouth. Past volcanic flows radiate from the large craters.

As Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29, 2012, the storm’s waves and wind cut a breach in a narrow part of Fire Island, a barrier island south of Long Island, New York.

Residents had little warning when wildfires that ignited late Sunday night, October 8, 2017, were fanned by wind gusts of 50 miles per hour and blasted across California's wine country. More than 100,000 acres have burned as of October 11, with less than 6 percent of the fires contained.

This Landsat image looks like a bold watercolor. Yellow dances across the darkness with muted violet underneath. With a kind of science-fiction flair, this scene shows a portion of the Qattara Depression in Egypt.

A screenshot of the phenocam at the U.S.

Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica has snapped off its share of icebergs in recent years. The frequency of noteworthy breaks is evidence that the ice shelf is becoming increasingly fragile. The latest iceberg cracked off the end of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf around September 23, 2017.

A GPS device on the banks of the Kootenai River of northern Idaho, where USGS EROS researchers conducted topobathymetry surveys in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.A GPS device on the banks of the Kootenai River of northern Idaho, where USGS EROS researchers conducted topobathymetry surveys in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.

A boat moves off the banks of the Kootenai River in northern Idaho. Researchers from USGS EROS conducted topobathymetry surveys of the river in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.

This pair of Landsat 8 images shows the large-scale damage done to Puerto Rico. The lush green landscape in the 2016 image is replaced by a faded green. The strong winds stripped the leaves off trees to cause the degraded landscape. The forest is expected to recover.

In September 2017, Landsat 8's Operational Land Imager (OLI) Landsat 8 captured this image of a large phytoplankton bloom in Lake Erie, near Toledo, Ohio. 

A view of the Kootenai River in northern Idaho from a boat. USGS EROS researchers conducted topobathymetry surveys of the river in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.

Extensive farmland in northeastern China shows a predictable pattern of vertical shapes. But on closer inspection, the shapes begin to look more random, with variances everywhere. Look closely to be surprised by patterns and broken patterns.

Hurricane Irma crossed the Florida Keys the morning of September 10, 2017, as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 miles per hour. Besides damage done to structures on the islands, the storm also stirred the waters.

The dramatic changes to the island caused by Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, are shown in this pair of images from Landsat 8. Landsat uses shortwave-infrared, near-infrared, and green wavelengths to reveal those changes. The August 27 image shows healthy vegetation as bright green.

In early September 2017, Landsat 8 captured this image of what looked like an oil spill off the coast of Brazil, near Sao Paulo. The "oil" turned out to be a vast algal bloom that covered more than 100 km. This bloom was the result of a species of tiny dinoflagellate that multiplied quickly to produce astronomical numbers -- enough to color the ocean water.

Extensive flooding inundated the Gulf Coast of Texas after Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on August 25, 2017. Among the many waterways in southeastern Texas that exceeded flood stage was the Brazos River, which flows past Houston to its west and to the Gulf of America at Freeport.

Landsat 8 captured this image of Lake Erie during a harmful algal bloom event on September 26, 2017.