Images

A GPS device on the banks of the Kootenai River of northern Idaho, where USGS EROS researchers conducted topobathymetry surveys in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.A GPS device on the banks of the Kootenai River of northern Idaho, where USGS EROS researchers conducted topobathymetry surveys in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.

A boat moves off the banks of the Kootenai River in northern Idaho. Researchers from USGS EROS conducted topobathymetry surveys of the river in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.

This pair of Landsat 8 images shows the large-scale damage done to Puerto Rico. The lush green landscape in the 2016 image is replaced by a faded green. The strong winds stripped the leaves off trees to cause the degraded landscape. The forest is expected to recover.

A view of the Kootenai River in northern Idaho from a boat. USGS EROS researchers conducted topobathymetry surveys of the river in 2017 using LiDAR and sonar equipment.

Extensive farmland in northeastern China shows a predictable pattern of vertical shapes. But on closer inspection, the shapes begin to look more random, with variances everywhere. Look closely to be surprised by patterns and broken patterns.

Hurricane Irma crossed the Florida Keys the morning of September 10, 2017, as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 miles per hour. Besides damage done to structures on the islands, the storm also stirred the waters.

The dramatic changes to the island caused by Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, are shown in this pair of images from Landsat 8. Landsat uses shortwave-infrared, near-infrared, and green wavelengths to reveal those changes. The August 27 image shows healthy vegetation as bright green.

Extensive flooding inundated the Gulf Coast of Texas after Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on August 25, 2017. Among the many waterways in southeastern Texas that exceeded flood stage was the Brazos River, which flows past Houston to its west and to the Gulf of Mexico at Freeport.

In early September 2017, Landsat 8 captured this image of what looked like an oil spill off the coast of Brazil, near Sao Paulo. The "oil" turned out to be a vast algal bloom that covered more than 100 km. This bloom was the result of a species of tiny dinoflagellate that multiplied quickly to produce astronomical numbers -- enough to color the ocean water.

Landsat satellites captured this image of Lake Erie during a harmful algal bloom event.

A new rift has been forming on Petermann Glacier, Greenland, throughout 2017. An older crack to the right of the new rift also seems to be extending toward the glacier's center. If this new rift meets up with the older crack, and an iceberg breaks off, it would be Petermann's third massive iceberg calving since 2010.

Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Texas as a Category 4 hurricane on the night of August 25, 2017. It then stalled over southeastern Texas as a tropical storm and continued to creep northeast over Louisiana.

Vegetation appears red in this piece, which moves from dark to light in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The vegetation grows along streams, which seem to follow a tortured course through the ridges and valleys before wandering through the desert.

Wetlands have a unique beauty when viewed from above. This natural color 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.

It may seem surprising that wildfires burn in Greenland, a huge island of ice and glaciers. But fires do happen there. Earth-observing satellites detected a fire in a remote area of western Greenland in August 2017.

In northern Brazil, the Belo Monte Dam complex on the Xingu River, a major tributary of the Amazon, has changed the course of the river and surrounding landscape. 

In far northern Canada, pulses of freshwater flow down rivers after inland ice and snow melts. These pulses, known as a freshet, carry huge amounts of sediment. The sediment seen in this image flowed into the Beaufort Sea from the Mackenzie River, the longest northward-flowing river in North America.

Around July 10–12, 2017, in the middle of the long, dark Antarctic winter, a rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf broke through the last few miles of ice to the Weddell Sea and formed a new iceberg. The NOAA National Ice Center has given the Delaware-sized iceberg the designation A-68.

This Landsat 8 image was captured July 11, 2017, roughly 2 weeks prior to the onset of unprecedented wildfires in western Greenland. The slow-burning fires appear to be fed by peat-rich soils that have been exposed by melting glaciers.

An increasingly large gash has opened up in northern Russia's Siberian tundra. During the past few decades, warmer summers and shorter winters have caused permafrost in this region to thaw, which then allows the warmed soils on slopes to slump and erode.

In this region, called the Valley of the Moon in Jordan, steep-sided granite mountains alternate with sandy valleys. It may be an unfriendly landscape, but it makes nice textures for an art print. An intriguing interruption of those textures is provided by a few center pivot irrigation fields.