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A prolonged dry spell has sparked woes over water availability and wildfire in the western United States.

If you're watching this video, you're probably using a lithium battery. Smartphones, tablets and laptops all rely on lithium metal to store energy. It comes from surface mines or brine ponds, found in places like Australia, China and the United States. One of the leading sources for this increasingly valuable resource is the South American nation of Chile.

In late March of 2021, just four miles from the edge of South Dakota's second-largest city, two wildfires sparked by human activity burned through a section of the Black Hills.

A small watershed restoration project proves that land farmed for half a century can be returned to a previous state. In 2002, Mike Osterholm bought 98 acres in northeastern Iowa, most of it annually tilled cropland. The land included the confluence of Duck Creek and Waterloo Creek.

The Bay of Fundy in Canada has a unique geography funneling the Atlantic Ocean into some of the world's highest tides. At some points the water level can rise and fall over forty feet. The water's edge at Minas Basin shown in these Landsat 8 images changes dramatically depending on the day and time.

The visible impact of climate change on the Earth’s surface is often clearest in the Arctic’s receding glaciers and swelling glacial lakes. Southeastern Alaska’s Harlequin Lake is one of the fastest-growing in North America. These false color Landsat images show the rapidly-retreating Yakutat Glacier, which feeds the lake.

On December 26th, 2004, a massive 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The third largest earthquake ever recorded lifted the sea floor several meters, causing tsunami waves to ripple out in all directions and race across the ocean. Banda Aceh bore the brunt of the waves just 15 to 20 minutes after the earthquake.

The waves of sugar cane that once defined the Hawaiian island landscape of Maui, have slowly given way to non-native annual grasses in recent decades. Those grasses have become a fire hazard along the way.

Social scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fort Collins Science Center – in collaboration with the USGS National Land Imaging Program – conduct Earth observation user case studies using qualitative research methods.

Social scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fort Collins Science Center – in collaboration with the USGS National Land Imaging Program – conduct Earth observation user case studies using qualitative research methods.

The USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) Initiative scientist Jennifer Rover offers examples of LCMAP Science Product uses at the 2020 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Winter Meeting.
 

The western wall of Uzbekistan's Sardoba Reservoir breached on May 1st, 2020 after a week of heavy rain. Thousands were evacuated as water rushed north into farmland and villages across the central Asian country and into neighboring Kazakhstan. Imagery from Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite shows water pooling across a wide area.

Social scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fort Collins Science Center – in collaboration with the USGS National Land Imaging Program – conduct Earth observation user case studies using qualitative research methods.

Social scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fort Collins Science Center – in collaboration with the USGS National Land Imaging Program – conduct Earth observation user case studies using qualitative research methods.

Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland is known to generate large icebergs, most notably in 2010 and 2012. Another large iceberg may be forming now. A new rift was spotted on the glacier in 2017. Since then, imagery from both Landsat and Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites show the rift lengthening and meeting up with and older crack.

This is EROS.

It's located just north of Sioux Falls in South Dakota in the United States on the planet Earth!

As fire season continues in the western United States let's look back at a number of incidents tracked by officials across California in August. These fires were captured during the day by Landsats 7 and 8, in natural color bands of the visible spectrum. Landsat sensors also record infrared wavelengths revealing burn scars and active fires.

In Russia's Extreme North, a widening chasm known as the Batagaika Crater provides a unique opportunity to study the past. Early declassified aerial images recorded the crater's growth in the 1960s and 1970s followed by multispectral sensor imagery captured by Landsat and Sentinel satellites, building a continuous view over the last 60 years.

In a remote part of the Sahara Desert in Egypt, center pivot irrigation fields fill the landscape. Thanks to the Landsat archive, we can see how dramatically this area has changed over the last 35 years. But until the growth in irrigation, this part of the world hadn't changed much from a satellite's perspective.

Landsat recently captured the most widespread meltwater pooling ever recorded on Antarctica's George VI Ice Shelf. Some melting is expected during the Antarctic summer, but the sheer extent of the stunning aqua ponds that have appeared amid the continent's warmest summer on record is remarkable.

The Shishaldin Volcano on the eastern edge of Alaska's Aleutian Island chain erupted with activity in January of 2020. The eruption on the island of Unimak sent an ash cloud nearly 5 miles into the sky on January 7th, sparking ash alerts for aviators, mariners, and residents of nearby communities.