Images

Is Louisiana falling into the sea, or is the sea inundating Louisiana? It's actually a bit of both. To the inhabitants of a tiny island on the bayou, an island getting tinier by the day, it hardly matters.

This image of the New Orleans/Lake Pontchartrain area in Louisiana was acquired March 31, 2017, from the Indian Space Research Organization’s Resourcesat-2 LISS-3 sensor. Land loss and hurricane hazards are key landscape issues here. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Visit this USGS EROS Image of the Week to learn more. 

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.

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.

Vermont was the first state admitted to the union after the original 13 colonies. Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, is the smallest state capital with a population of less than 8,000. 

Capital Montpelier

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 643,077

Arkansas, officially “The Natural State,” is a state of mountains, valleys, dense woodland and fertile plains. Its clear lakes and streams and abundant wildlife help to make tourism one of the state’s most important industries.

Capital Little Rock

Image Source Landsat 8

Landsat 7's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor captured the image that shows the white covering on the caramel-colored landscape southwest of the Algerian community of Ain Sefra, a town sometimes referred to as the gateway to the desert.

In June 1998, a pilot discovered a strange sight in the Australian outback that wasn't there before—a huge outline of what appeared to be an Aboriginal man throwing either a boomerang or a stick. It turned out to be a geoglyph, which is a design on the ground typically made of natural elements and best viewed from above.

Large areas within the Amazon rain forest have undergone large-scale deforestation over the past few decades, and Landsat has helped record this widespread land change.

Pio XI flows from the SPI toward the west then splits into two fronts. From 1998 to 2014, the southern front advanced 593 meters. The northern front, which flows into Lake Greve, advanced 107 meters in the same time period. This pair of Landsat images shows that all of the other glaciers that flow down from the SPI into Lake Greve are retreating.

A week after Hurricane Matthew slammed through southwestern Haiti on October 4, 2016, Landsat 8's Operational Land Imager sensor provided dramatic documentation of the scope of destruction in the Caribbean country. 

Images from Landsat 8's Operational Land Imager sensor show the dramatic transformation of the river as it flows toward Cedar Rapids. On July 8, 2016, the shallow river meanders into the city, surrounded by green crops in the heart of the growing season.