Images

The surface level of Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona has fallen to a historic low as 16 years of ongoing drought in the American Southwest continue to impact the Colorado River Basin.

On May 18, 2016, a Landsat 8 acquisition of flood-ravaged Sri Lanka produced impressive imagery of swollen waterways.

Eleven days after a wildfire first sparked south of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager (OLI) captured imagery of one of the most destructive infernos in Canadian history. The fire has burned an area approaching 600,000 acres.

Image of the Week: A massive wildfire burning near Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, fueled by dry conditions and high winds, has destroyed 1,600 structures and forced more than 88,000 people to evacuate the area so far.

When the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded 30 years ago, on April 26, 1986, Landsat 5 was the first civilian satellite to confirm the disaster near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the agricultural heartland of the Soviet Union.  

The 122nd Boston Marathon, the oldest annual marathon in the world, takes place on April 16, 2018. This Landsat 8 image shows the April landscape of eastern Massachusetts, before vegetation has greened up. The yellow line indicates the point-to-point route that the marathon follows.

The main feature here, near Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, is the Schooner Cays shoal complex. The tidal sand ridges, parabolic bars, and intervening channels explode in a blue rhythm. The Bahamas have the third most extensive coral reef in the world.

Image of the Week, Land Resources carousel

Ice covering Beaufort Sea near the Arctic Ocean typically reaches full-blown breakup by late May each year as air and water temperatures warm, and as daylight turns longer. But 2016 has been dramatically different.

Using shortwave infrared, near infrared, and visible bands, these Landsat images provide a before and after look at the 350 Complex and Anderson Creek fires.

In shallow waters surrounding the Tyuleniy Archipelago in the Caspian Sea, chunks of ice were the artists. The 3-meter-deep water makes the dark green vegetation on the sea bottom visible. The lines scratched in that vegetation were caused by ice chunks, pushed upward and downward by wind and currents, scouring the sea floor.

A serene gradient from red to smoky blue-gray seems to mask a chaotic scene underneath, expressing a wide range of emotion. Looking like a NASA closeup of Jupiter, this image reveals sediment in the Gulf of America off the Louisiana coast.

Image of the Week: Landsat imagery shows a dramatic change in lakes Azuéi and Enriquillo, inland saltwater lakes on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola that are known for their crocodiles and iguanas.

Landsat images used by Colombia's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) determined that total forest land cover in the country has dropped from 56.8 percent in 1990 to 52.6 percent by 2012, or almost 5 million hectares.

In a world becoming increasingly urbanized, few cities have seen growth as dramatic as that occurring in India's capital of New Delhi.

These Landsat images show the remarkable transformation of desert sand in 1986 into green, circular fields—some as large as 1 kilometer across—by 2016

Three images showing Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes on the island of Hawaii; 2016 satellite image mosaic

Though the park celebrates its 100th anniversary on August 1, 2016, its main attractions-Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes-have been adding to the land mass of Hawaii’s “Big Island” for at least 400,000 years.

Most of this image is in the Simpson Desert Regional Reserve of South Australia. The shallow lakes, appearing in colors ranging from nearly black to aqua blue, are dry most of the time. Here, they seem to stretch with the sand dunes, which extend for hundreds of kilometers.

Collection: Earth As Art 5

The total area (land and water) of Rhode Island is only 1,545 square miles. The state measures about 37 miles east-west, and about 48 miles north-south.

Capital Providence

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 1,097,379

Number of Pixels 3,162,631

Variously shaped fields of crops decorate the rich Canterbury Plains on New Zealand's South Island. This 2015 Landsat image shows the farmland abutting the  Waimakariri River that winds down toward the city of Christchurch and ultimately the Pacific Ocean.