Images

On the border between Chile and the Catamarca province of Argentina lies a vast field of currently dormant volcanoes. Over time, these volcanoes have laid down a crust of magma roughly 2 miles (3.2 km) thick. It is tinged with a patina of various colors that can indicate both the age and mineral content of the original lava flows.

The Mediterranean Sea physically separates--but in other ways unites--southern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa.

Western Asia, the world's largest continent, occupies one-third of the Earth's landmass. Although divisions are somewhat arbitrary, Western Asia encompasses the Middle East and countries that surround the Caspian Sea, including Kazakhstan and Russia.

The third largest continent, North America is a land of many facets: frozen tundra, rugged mountains, high plains, deserts, and lowland forests.

Soaring, snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalaya Mountains create an irregular white-on-red patchwork between major rivers in southwestern China. The Himalayas are made up of three parallel mountain ranges that together extend more than 2,900 kilometers.

A marsh-like area borders the Demini River in northwestern Brazil. The Demini eventually joins the Amazon River.

Eastern Asia is dominated geographically by China, which stretches from the Tian Shan Mountains in the west to the sheltered bays of the Yellow Sea in the east.

Mexico and Central America together form the southern half of the North American continent. From the rugged deserts of the Baja Peninsula to the steamy rain forests of Panama, the region is a land of great contrasts.

A scene along a road 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 photographed the scene again in 2004.

This is a screenshot of 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act Congressional Record. The full document is available below. 

The first National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), based on Landsat 5 data, is completed and available for distribution in 2000.

Sometimes described as resembling a stingray or a tadpole, the Batagaika Crater is a widening chasm in Siberia and the world’s largest permafrost crater.

The Landsat Global Archive Consolidation initiative has retrieved and ingested its 5 millionth image since it began in 2010. The data came from the Riyadh Ground Station in Saudi Arabia and was acquired by Landsat 5 on April 16, 1989. It shows an area over Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

A Landsat 5 image of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant site in Ukraine on April 29, 1986, three days after the accident, shows no warmth in the cooling pond.

EROS Employee Aaron Neugebauer holding fish from the EROS pond. 

Screenshot of the 1985 Public Law 98-365 The Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act Memo

A false color Landsat 5 image from July 22, 1985, of Waubay Lake and Bitter Lake in Day County, South Dakota.

What look like pale yellow paint streaks slashing through a mosaic of mottled colors are ridges of wind-blown sand that make up Erg Iguidi, an area of ever-shifting sand dunes extending from Algeria into Mauritania in northwestern Africa.

Shimmering blues and greens accentuate the textures of the Sierra de Velasco Mountains of northern Argentina. The urban area (pinkish circle) near the lower left part of the mountain range is La Rioja, the capital of the province of La Rioja.

1984 International Remote Sensing Workshop Poster

Sioux Falls SD, image from CIR Aircraft (E-640-99BN)