Images

The copper color in this infrared combination is the presence of lake ice in the Northwest Territories in northern Canada. The lake on the right side is Whitefish Lake, in a region with numerous glacial landforms. Bright wrinkle-like lines are eskers, ridges made of sand and gravel formed by glacial sediments deposited by meltwater rivers flowing on the ice.

Water flowing out of this inland delta rarely reaches the ocean; instead, it seeps into the semiarid plains of northeastern Kenya. The dark feature in the upper left, which looks like a black eye, is hard basaltic rock from an ancient lava flow.

The Susquehanna River appears as a dark line coursing through this scene in southeastern Pennsylvania. The cities of York, Lancaster, and Reading lie among agricultural lands. The State capital, Harrisburg, is positioned against the orange folds in the upper left of the image, along the edge of the Appalachian Mountain Ridge and Valley Province.

A vast, open expanse in Namibia is one of the largest salt pans in the world. The pan is within Etosha National Park, protected since 1907. The horizontal line across the image is the national park fence. The wild patterns in this infrared interpretation are from numerous episodes of water evaporation following seasonal rains.

These cloud patterns cast eerie shadows on the landscape of southern Egypt. The clouds appear red and the desert below hazy blue in this infrared rendition.

Is this a black-and-white image? No, this is a natural color image of snow-covered southwestern Russia. Windbreaks, roads, and fence lines look like random pencil marks near the Volga River, which flows across the top of the image.

Marking part of the boundary between Colombia and Venezuela, the Meta River resembles an artery among capillaries within the human body. Those capillary-like features actually depict dense tree cover along the numerous streams that flow among rich tropical grassland.

Agriculture expansion between 1975 and 2013 and bioclimatic zones of West Africa (includes rainfed agriculture, irrigated agriculture, plantations, agriculture in shallows and recession, and cropland and fallow with oil palms)

Nevada was the fastest growing state between 1990 and 2000, with a population growth rate of 66.3 percent. No other state topped 40 percent.

Capital Carson City

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 3,104,614 

Number of Pixels 318,192,547

This color-coded land cover map, showing cropland, water bodies, urban areas, and other types of land cover, is based on a 2013 Landsat satellite image. Satellite-image-derived land cover maps are essential tools for studying land cover and land use change over time on local, regional, and global scales.

Landsat 8 helps reveal the hidden complexities of the Antarctic landscape. In this image, ice takes on different levels of blue with exposed rock and dirt appearing in yellow tones. The dynamic Koettlitz Glacier flows between Brown Peninsula and the rugged mainland.

ASTER Surface Reflectance (AST_07) data can be used to view complex landscapes like the Rio Grande River Valley in southern New Mexico. This Terra ASTER surface reflectance natural color composite shows differences in reflectance over forested hills, irrigated agriculture, and arid regions.

This Landsat image shows how glaciers scoured the landscape, gouging out depressions that formed linear lakes. The glaciers also exposed the complex folded rock layers that form the Labrador Trough of Quebec in Canada. Glacial action is evident in the fingerprint-like patterns.

Startling red patches sprout from an agricultural landscape that looks almost like a Cubist painting. The fields in this part of eastern Kazakhstan follow the contours of the land—long and narrow in mountain valleys, and large and rectangular over the plains.

Neal Pastick – lead author of the study – investigating erosion along Alaska’s Arctic coastline near the village of Kaktovik. Permafrost-dominated coasts of Alaska have drastically changed as the result of coastal transgression and storm-surge flooding which can result in the loss of cultural sites and damage to infrastructure.  Photo by M.

When landmasses collide, rock layers can break. Geologists call these breaks "faults." Rock layers are offset in this image in western China, making the faults remarkably clear. The different colors indicate rocks that formed at different times and in different environments.

Geometric shapes lie across the emptiness of the Sahara Desert in southern Egypt. Each point is a center pivot irrigation field a little less than 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) across. With no surface water in this region, wells pump underground water to rotating sprinklers from the huge Nubian Sandstone aquifer, which lies underneath the desert.

This image, which shows the tropical estuary of the Ord River in Australia, is part of the Earth as Art 4 series. 

Example of the Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS Collection 2 level-2 science products. Left: Landsat 8 level-2 surface reflectance image. Right: Landsat 8 level-2 surface temperature image. The data was acquired on May 3, 2013 (path 140 row 41).

A scene along a road in east central Senegal, photographed in 1984 by U.S. Geological Survey Scientist G. Gray Tappan as part of his work on West African land cover. Tappan photographed the scene again in 2013.

A scene along a road in east-central Senegal, photographed in 2013 by U.S. Geological Survey Scientist G. Gray Tappan as part of his work on West African land cover. Tappan photographed the scene again in 2013.