Tech could someday let people even in dry climates
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Following are ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) images taken from space that show the sometimes strange and wild beauty of our world as well as its vulnerability to climate change.
Glacial retreat ▽
New Zealand contains over 3,000 glaciers, mostly in the Southern Alps on the South Island. The glaciers have been retreating since 1890. Click here to see the same location in 1990.
Find out how the dust in your country might be contributing to glacier loss here.

Bottom of the world ▽
Space imagery revealed a wide crack in Pine Island Glacier in the Antarctic. The area has undergone a steady loss of elevation with retreat of the grounding line in recent decades.
Satellites brought you these images, but they can be vulnerable to attacks. Find out here how experts are safeguarding our assets in space.

Water sculpture ▽
Erosion has carved the mountain slopes along the western flank of the Andes of Lima, Peru, into long, narrow serpentine ridges.
Click here to see how water erosion can change a landscape.

Troubled waters ▽
This image shows the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon River, at Manaus, Brazil, in 2023. Compare this image to one taken in 2020 to see the effects of drought. Here, vegetated areas show up as pink to red. Water is black or blue.

Fan dance ▽
An alluvial fan spreads between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges at the southern border of China’s Taklimakan Desert in this ASTER image. The blue left side is the active part of the fan, made up of water flowing from many small streams. An alluvial fan is an area where rivers deposit silt, sand and other debris over a long period of time.

In the pink ▽
Lake Natron in Africa’s Great Rift Valley is the world’s most caustic body of water. The alkaline lake gets its color from salt-loving spirulina algae, whose pigments are passed along to the lesser flamingos that feed on them.

A summer thaw ▽
After a 4,400-kilometer journey north from the mountains of south-central Russia, the Lena River fractures into streams that empty into the Arctic Ocean via the Laptev Sea. The Lena River Delta is frozen for as long as seven months of the year, but it thaws during the summer into an ecologically important wetland. Changes in the volume of water emptying into the sea as well as the depth of the permafrost (soil that remains frozen year-round) indicate Arctic climate change. Vegetation shows up as green; places scoured by annual spring floods appear bright white; and mudflats and other areas covered by shallow water are light blue.
Related: The history of remote areas can help guide laws as humans move out into space. Read more here.

Down under ▽
Lake Mackay is the largest of hundreds of ephemeral lakes scattered throughout Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It is also the second largest lake in Australia. Darker areas indicate desert vegetation or algae, moisture within the soils and lowest elevations where water pools.

Endangered glacier ▽
This image of the southwest part of the Malaspina Glacier and Icy Bay in Alaska is a composite of infrared and visible bands. Snow and ice appear light blue; dense vegetation is yellow-orange and green; and less vegetated, gravelly areas are orange. According to Dennis Trabant of the U.S. Geological Survey in Fairbanks, Alaska, the Malaspina Glacier is thinning. Its terminal moraine protects it from contact with the open ocean; without the moraine, or if sea level rises sufficiently to reconnect the glacier with the ocean, the glacier would start calving and retreat significantly.

On target ▽
This prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of Mauritania has attracted attention since the earliest space missions and is now a landmark for shuttle crews. The conspicuous bull’s-eye in the otherwise rather featureless desert has a diameter of almost 50 kilometers. Although it was initially interpreted as a meteorite-impact site, it is now thought to be merely a symmetrical uplift (circular anticline) that has been laid bare by erosion. Paleozoic quartzites form the resistant beds outlining the structure.
Read here to find out how low- and high-tech methods are helping to turn deserts green.

Heart of sand ▽
The Rub’ al Khali or Empty Quarter is one of the largest sand deserts in the world, encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula and including parts of Oman, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The desert covers 650,000 square kilometers, more than the area of France.
A hearty desert resident might be the key to a more environmentally responsible food source. Read here for more.

Ancient impact ▽
The Shoemaker Impact Structure in Australia is estimated to be between 1,000 and 600 million years ago. The structure is 30 kilometers in diameter and is recognized by the deformation of the resistant ironstones of the Frere Formation, shown here in dark green. Low-lying areas are salt-encrusted seasonal and dry lakes.

Wind up ▽
The Songhua River meanders through northeast China. The image also shows oxbow lakes, lakes that form in abandoned meander loops of a river channel.

Written in the earth ▽
The Messak Settafet plateau’s dark, erosion-resistant sandstone separates the Ubari Sand Sea to the north and the Marzūq Sand Sea to the south. Although the plateau in southwestern Libya now receives less than 10 millimeters of rain annually, clues in the landscape make clear it was once much wetter. Deeply incised dried stream valleys, or wadis, crisscross the plateau, indicating significant past water flow.

City in the desert ▽
In the middle of the Arabian desert the city Green Oasis Wadi Al Dawasir is being developed for the Wadi Al Dawasir region of Saudi Arabia. Solar fields supply the city and the region with energy. Center pivot irrigation apparatus drawing water from subterranean aquifers feed hundreds of circular agricultural fields.

Agriculture in Sudan ▽
Al Jazirah, also known as Gezira, is one of the 26 states of Sudan. The state lies between the Blue Nile and the White Nile in the east-central region of the country and is a major agriculture center.

Striking gold ▽
The Escondida open-pit mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert produces copper, gold and silver. Primary concentration of the ore is done on-site; the concentrate is then sent to the coast for further processing through a 170-kilometer-long pipe.
Mining might not just be an industry only on Earth. Read here to find out how the moon might provide important materials as humans step into space.

The cold north ▽
Franz Josef Land, an archipelago in the far north of Russia, consists of 191 islands covering about 200 by 325 kilometers. It has no native inhabitants.

Picture this ▽
Jebel Uweinat is a mountain range at the Egyptian-Sudanese-Libyan border. In general, the west slope constitutes an oasis, with wells, bushes and grass. The area is notable for its prehistoric petroglyphs representing giraffes, lions, ostriches, gazelles and human figures.

ASTER, a collaboration of U.S. and Japanese scientists, produces images using infrared, red and green wavelengths.