On April 25, 2014, NASA's Aqua satellite observed dozens of fires burning in North Korea. Drooping wires on aging power lines are a common cause of wildfires in North Korea, according to a report published in The Asia-Pacific Journal. Collectively, the fires were producing enough smoke to send plumes of haze drifting east over the Sea of Japan.
In the fertile lowland plains of Argentina (the Pampas), a guitar-shaped forest grows amidst the farmland and has become a wonder for pilots and passengers flying over the region. It turns out the forest is visible from space, too.
Remote. Cold. Rugged. Those three adjectives capture the essence of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Another word”perhaps more applicable than anywhere else on Earth”is fiery. Forty of Kamchatka's 113 volcanoes are active, either erupting now or capable of erupting on short notice. The Landsat 8 satellite captured activity at five of them during a single satellite pass on April 14, 2014.
The Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is a favorite for astronauts shooting photos from the International Space Station as well as one of the best-known tourist attractions in the world. The steep walls of the Colorado River canyon and its many side canyons make an intricate landscape that contrasts with the dark green, forested plateau to the north and south.
As a mountain stream moves into a flat area, it slows down and loses its capacity to carry as much alluvium as it did upstream, depositing the excess in sandbars throughout the channels. Over time, the channel migrates back and forth, creating fan-shaped deposits known as alluvial fans.
Located in southeastern India, Chilika is best known as a mecca for birds, which are attracted by the hundreds of species of fish and other aquatic life. During peak migratory season, the lake hosts more than 1 million birds from more than 200 species. Also, the number of shrimp farms around Chilika has increased dramatically in recent decades.
Lightning flashes occur 4.3 million times a day on Earth. The Firestation, a new instrument aboard the International Space Station, includes photometers to measure lightning flashes, radio antennas to measure the static (a proxy for the strength of the electrical discharge) and a gamma-ray electron detector.
This sector of the Green River canyon in eastern Utah is known as Bowknot Bend because of the way the river doubles back on itself. The loop carries river rafters 14.5 kilometers (9 miles) before bringing them back to nearly the same point they started from”though on the other side of a low, narrow saddle.
An image of the Amazon acquired from NASA's MESSENGER satellite shows how substituting an infrared sensor for a blue one renders a crisper image of plants and trees from space and offers valuable information about plant health.
A whopping 68 million metric tons of material sliding down the flanks of Alaska's Mount La Perouse on Feb. 16, 2014, potentially makes this the largest-known natural landslide on Earth since 2010.
