Earth looks like a painting in stunning US Geological Survey satellite pics
Felix Allen
THE Earth is splashed with vivid colour like oil paintings in a stunning series of pictures from space.
These fascinating images reveal the world as you may never have seen it before, from inky waters flowing from a sub-tropical swamp to the shifting glaciers of the frozen North.
Red and black seem to mar the icy glacial landscape of southern Iceland. The grey-black filaments are past glacial melting outbursts called jökulhlaups. These abrupt flooding events gush down this outwash plain called Skeiðarársandur, one of the world’s largest. The Skeiðarárjökull Glacier reaches down from the top left of the image. The plain is mostly devoid of vegetation, but red colouring indicates low moss, birch shrub, and other grass species.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Jebel Kissu, in northwestern Sudan, emerges abruptly like an island in the vast Sahara Desert. The plateau is the eroded remnant of a granite dome. The bright linear features are truck tracks, common in the Sahara where there are no paved roads. Resembling graphic novel art style, this image could be an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, burning across a twilight sky.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Rock folding on a tectonic scale occurred in northwestern Africa. These motley ribbons dancing across the desert in Morocco are folds caused by the prolonged collision of tectonic plates. The long continuous line is Jbel Ouarkziz, a ridge that rises 200–300m above the valley floors.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
The "false colour" satellite and drone pics make use of infrared wavelengths as well as visible light, highlighting features on the ground in incredible detail.
Not only are they eerily beautiful, but they also serve a serious purpose.
Vegetation is coloured red or blue in many of the images, revealing where plants are growing and helping scientists track the changing climate.
The pictures were revealed by the US Geological Survey in its Earth As Art 6 collection, which the agency described as "awe-inspiring".
One shows a view of Iceland’s Skeiðarárjökull glacier, where the red colouring on a nearby plain indicates low moss, birch shrub, and other grass species.
Another of a glacier on Russian islands in the Arctic Ocean surprised scientists with its rapid change.
USGS uses Landsat space probes, built and launched by Nasa, and unmanned aircraft to provide real-time or near real-time observations of our planet.
The agency said: “We provide science about the natural hazards that threaten lives and livelihoods; the water, energy, minerals, and other natural resources we rely on; the health of our ecosystems and environment; and the impacts of climate and land-use change.
"Our scientists develop new methods and tools to supply timely, relevant, and useful information about the Earth and its processes.”
A mesmerising plume creates a paradox of light and dark, brilliant and murky. The dark water of the Suwannee River flows from the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida. The inky colour comes from decaying vegetation at the river’s swampy source.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
One glacier on Russian islands in the Arctic Ocean surprised scientists with its rapid change. After decades of normal, slow movement, a glacier draining Vavilov Ice Cap sprang forward, accelerating rapidly after 2013. This fast movement is extremely rare for cold-based glaciers. In five years, the ice tongue doubled in size. In this inverted rendition, land is blue and fractured sea ice appears tan across the top of the image.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
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. The salt from the water is rearranged into new patterns every time the shallow water dries out. The surrounding blue shades are dry bushland savanna.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Palmyra Atoll is an ancient volcanic remnant located about 1,000 miles from Hawaii. The Nature Conservancy, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, manages the atoll as a science and research station. Multispectral sensors on drones efficiently capture high-resolution images of land and coral reefs. Part of the atoll, an islet named Pelican Island, shows green vegetation as blue.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Water from the Balkh River fans out into an agricultural area toward an arid region in northern Afghanistan, near the border with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Part of an ancient region called Bactria, extensive irrigation produces melons, almonds, apricots, and grains. Mazar-e Sharif is the urban area that dominates the lower right corner of the image.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
A frantic-looking scene in northeastern Ethiopia shows the location of three tectonic plates shifting away from each other. In this region, Earth’s crust is rifting at one to two centimetres per year. New fissures opened in the Erta Ale shield volcano in January 2017, and this image from March 2017 shows the locations of the fresh lava. The shapes streaking away from the centre are previously erupted, cooled, and solidified lava flows.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Wetlands have a unique beauty when viewed from above. This natural colour drone image shows the intricate interactions of forest and surface water in this high-altitude wetland called a fen in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Wetlands enhance water quality and provide habitats for diverse plant and animal species. Drones help with mapping fens for conservation and restoration studies.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Near the Queen Fabiola Mountains, also called the Yamato Mountains, is a classic example of blue ice in Antarctica. Blue ice emerges where wind scours glaciers clean of snow and forms when air bubbles are squeezed out of layers of partially compacted snow left over from previous seasons. The ice appears blue because red and yellow wavelengths of light are absorbed. Deeply penetrating light is uniformly scattered at blue wavelengths by the enclosed air bubbles.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
In northern Russia, the freshwater of the Mezen River meets the saltwater of the Arctic Ocean. The funnel-shaped estuary has a strong tidal current that mixes sediment in the water rather than building up a delta. In this colourful composition, the increasing brightness marks an increase in water turbidity.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Resembling choppy waters in a rough sea, this image is an infrared exposition of a sand sea in Namibia. Sand dunes surround a crescent-shaped rocky hill. This inselberg is hard rock that resisted the erosion that took place over time around it. The inselberg disrupts the deposition of sand, changing the dune pattern.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Algal blooms occur annually on Milford Lake in the summer and can be harmful to fragile wetland ecosystems. The USGS Kansas Water Science Center uses multispectral sensors on board drones to identify harmful algal blooms and study how they affect local businesses and human and animal health.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
The copper colour 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. The blue colour is land dominated by shrub tundra with some spruce stands.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Rupert Bay, an arm of James Bay, extends into Quebec, Canada. Many rivers carry sediment into the bay and combine with seawater coming in from the tide. A prominent sediment stream extends past Stag Island and a vortex curls off Stag Rock in the middle of the bay. Sediment trails off the islands toward the mainland, indicating the tide was coming in at the time of image acquisition.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
A bit of blue cubism in southern Uzbekistan highlights the intensive irrigation that is common along rivers that flow into the Aral Sea. However, so much water is used for irrigation that very little actually reaches the Aral Sea. The perplexing variety of blue and green shades are farm fields with actively growing vegetation among the scattered residential zones.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
This natural landscape might appear more like a medical illustration of itchy nerve endings. In Western Sahara, Africa, an intense network of wadis drains toward the west, eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean. These drainage courses are almost always dry in this remote part of the Sahara Desert.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
The Lake Eyre Basin is one of the driest places in Australia. But this image features a rare green flush to this otherwise parched landscape. Streams and creeks that drain into the basin are usually dry, but storms in March 2018 delivered water to these braided channels. By April, the floodwater had receded and left a green expanse behind. Scientists use satellites to track such flooding and greening events.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Seventeen rivers flow into the Bangweulu Wetlands in Zambia, but only one drains out. Green tendrils randomly sweep through the image, a landscape dominated by various grasslands, open water, and dense Papyrus grass and Phragmites reeds. The entire wetland covers an area about the size of Connecticut.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
Landsat satellites, built and launched by Nasa space agency and managed by the U.S. Geological Survey, have provided data crucial for modern maps used by consumers, researchers and governments worldwide.Credit: USGS/Cover Images
