Images

Comparison of color aerial photography with airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) imagery in an area west of Lake Tahoe, California. (A) Color aerial orthophoto for part of range front along eastern base of Mt. Tallac with geomorphic features obscured by dense forest cover. (B) Same scene, first-return LiDAR imagery.

Central Asia's Tibetan Plateau is justifiably nicknamed "the roof of the world"-its average elevation is more than 4,500 meters (14,764 feet). It is the world's highest and largest plateau, covering an area roughly four times the size of Texas. Tectonic forces have long shaped the Tibetan Plateau's crumpled and uplifted mountain ridges.

During the last ice age, Akimiski Island in Canada's James Bay lay beneath vast glaciers that pressed down with immense force. As the climate changed and the ice retreated, Akimiski began a gradual rebound.

Skeletal extensions of land reach like bony fingers across a section of Liverpool Bay along the northern edge of Canada's Northwest Territories. Only small villages are thinly scattered in this remote and inhospitable region of Arctic tundra bordering the Beaufort Sea.

This Landsat 7 image captures the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, MD, areas. Washington, D.C., lies in the center of the image along the Potomac River. Baltimore, in the upper-right portion of the image, is located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay.

Landsat Missions Web Site

Straight highways fan out like spokes on a wheel from the Argentine city of San Luis. To the right of the city are croplands that resemble colorful confetti. Founded in 1594, San Luis lies at the tip of the Sierra de San Luis and is largely surrounded by flat-to-rolling fertile plains.

Montana Conservation Reserve Program grassland in a 2006 USGS Land Cover Trends photo.

West African antelope

A 2006 photo taken on a USGS Land Cover Trends trip in Montana showing strips of cropland with fallow land in between.

A lake with submerged trees in Day County, South Dakota, part of the Prairie Pothole Region. 2006 photo from the USGS Land Cover Trends project

USGS Land Cover Trends photo in Montana in 2006 of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program.

The Waubay National Wildlife Refuge in Day County, South Dakota, is in the Prairie Pothole Region and includes Waubay Lake. 2006 photo from the USGS Land Cover Trends project

The intricate lines angling and criss-crossing over the landscape are roads in extreme southwestern Kazakhstan. The turquoise areas to the left are salt flats and marshes, some parts of which are submerged (dark blue). The water body is Sor Kaydak, which was once a gulf of the Caspian Sea.

Do you see a scary face looking back at you? The hollow-appearing eyes, narrow nose, and slash of a mouth are inundated patches of shallow Lake Eyre (pronounced "air"). Deep in the desert country of northern South Australia, Lake Eyre is an ephemeral feature of this flat, parched landscape. When seasonal rains are abundant, water fills the lakebed to some degree.

A popular holiday destination, the Lake District in northwestern England is a region of picturesque mountains and long, narrow lakes. Most of the lakes lie in U-shaped valleys that were carved by glaciers during the last ice age. Morecambe Bay, below the Lake District, opens into the Irish Sea.

Landsat 7 infrared image of wildfires near Yucca Valley, California. July 2006

Farmland near Hydetown, Pennsylvania, part of the Erie Drift Plain Ecoregion. This photo was taken during fieldwork for the USGS Land Cover Trends project. The project was focused on understanding the rates, trends, causes, and consequences of contemporary U.S.

In the style of Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night," massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form the first link in nearly all ocean food chains.

Vivid colors and bizarre shapes come together in an image that could be an imaginative illustration for a fantasy story. This labyrinth of exotic features is present along the edge of Russia's Chaunskaya Bay (vivid blue half circle) in northeastern Siberia. Two major rivers, the Chaun and Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn opens into the Arctic Ocean.

A landscape scene in Senegal, photographed in 1994 by U.S. Geological Survey Scientist G. Gray Tappan as part of his work on West African land cover. Tappan previously photographed the scene in 1983.

A landscape scene in Senegal, photographed in 1983 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 1994.