Images

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.

After 5 years of drought, California finally got relief during the winter of 2016–2017 with much needed precipitation. One result of this additional moisture was a springtime abundance of wildflowers in 2017. This Landsat 8 image shows a large area of wildflower "superbloom" just north of Los Padres National Forest in southern California.

After 5 years of drought, California finally got relief during the winter of 2016–2017 with much needed precipitation. One result of this additional moisture was a springtime abundance of wildflowers.

Solar energy is booming worldwide, and these Landsat 8 images show three large solar energy farms.

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.

Landsat's shortwave infrared (SWIR) band measures reduced moisture content in soil and vegetation. When combined with its near-infrared (NIR) band, which helps reveal actively growing vegetation, Landsat produces highly accurate images and maps of burned areas.

A feathery, blood red streak cuts across the heart of this image. The translucent red paint stroke is not actually a feature of the land. It is a cirrus cloud detected by Landsat 8’s cirrus band. This cirrus cloud, which hovers over the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, is invisible in natural color imagery.

This March 2017 Landsat 8 image shows massive burned scars in Kansas and Oklahoma. More than 730,000 acres of farm and ranchland were scorched by wind-driven wildfires that began March 6 and were finally extinguished on March 22.

Landsat 8’s shortwave infrared (SWIR) band is useful in viewing recent eruptions at Erta Ale volcano in northern Ethiopia near the Eritrea border.

Among countries with accelerated rates of deforestation—Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Uruguay, and Paraguay among them—Cambodia ranks above them all with an annual loss of 14.4 percent of its forests between 2001 and 2014, according to researchers at the University of Maryland, who used Landsat data to track their rates.

Landsat satellites have helped document retreating glaciers worldwide. In this 2017 Landsat 8 image, glacial retreat is revealed in the rugged wilderness region of Patagonia, site of the largest contiguous areas of ice cover outside Antarctica.

Wildfires fueled by dry conditions, high temperatures, and strong winds are scorching central Chile at a level Chilean officials say they haven’t seen in decades.

This aerial photo shows downtown Houston, Texas, and the surrounding area in January 2017 shortly before the city hosted the Super Bowl. Public domain photo by Glenn Fawcett of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

A decade of drought in California has eased after the first month of 2017 thanks to heavy rains and snow, a fact that Landsat images are helping to confirm.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard Landsat 8 captured this image an eruption from Ethiopia's Erte Ale volcano in late January of 2017.

This Indian Space Research Organization LISS-3 image of the Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay region, acquired on January 25, 2017, shows the landscape along the densely populated U.S. East coast. Ecosystems and sea-level rise are among the regional landscape changes that satellite imagery helps to monitor. 

Heavy rains in late December 2016 and early January 2017 are affecting soybean production in Argentina's bread-basket provinces while impacting soy prices worldwide.

Since mid-December 2016, roughly two dozen wildfires in the Pampas region of Argentina have consumed almost 2.5 million acres while unleashing giant plumes of dense smoke above the rural landscapes.

Even with the calming blue tones, there is an unsettling feeling in the jagged marks that lead to a circular feature. This feature is Gweni-Fada Crater, a meteorite impact crater in the Ennedi Plateau of northern Chad. In addition to the tension between calm and storm, there is a sense that this scene could pass as a view on another planet.

Landsat 8, Longyangxia solar farm, China, OLI

A new atlas named Landscapes of West Africa: A Window on a Changing World tells the story of transformations and trends across many lands in West Africa, including this look at the threat of human activities in the Okomu Forest Reserve in southern Nigeria.