Images

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

Erg Chebbi, Morocco

Sentinel 2 image, China's Tian Shan mountains

Snow covers the landscape in southwestern Minnesota just a day before the winter solstice. It may look like a stark black and white image, but it is really a natural color image. The Minnesota River flows from the upper left to the lower right.

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.

Tranquil colors and patterns intermingle near Argentina’s Colorado River, which runs across the upper one-third of the image. The calming textures are interrupted by a violent splash in the center, the result of volcanic action from the Auca Mahuida Volcanic Field from long ago.

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.

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.

This image of Devils Tower National Monument was created by combining elevation data and a digital photograph, captured over the landmark the same time by an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) in 2016.

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.

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.

A large infrastructure project has changed the shape of the coastline of the Netherlands while increasing the cargo capacity at Europe's largest port. This pair of Landsat images spanning 15 years shows the Maasvlakte 2 project, which is an expansion of the Port of Rotterdam.

Fog along the Yukon River showing a Black Spruce dominated forest in the foreground, which is prone to wildfire.  Photo by Bruce Wylie, USGS

Images from Landsat 5 in 1993 and Landsat 8 in 2016 show how the Yangtze river transformed after the completion of the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world in 2012. 

Mining has been part of Center's history for more than a century. In August 1984, the Landsat 5 image shows significant surface mining of lignite coal just to the southeast of town, during a summer when drought had browned the countryside. Thirty-two years later, the mining activity moved to the southwest of Center.

A wildfire near Soberanes Creek along the Pacific coast of California started July 22, 2016, and spread to over 86,000 acres one month later. Landsat images from July 13, July 29, and August 14 show the dramatic progression as active fire burns orange in the latter two scenes, and smoke appears as a blue haze.

On June 28, 2016, a 4,000-foot-high mountainside in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve collapsed, sending rocky debris equivalent to 60 million mid-size SUVs tumbling onto nearby Lamplugh Glacier.

Shrubland 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 2010.