EARTH as art three

General Information Product 111

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

For most of us, deserts, mountains, river valleys, coastlines—even 

dry lakebeds—are relatively familiar features of the Earth’s terrestrial 

environment. For earth scientists, they are the focus of considerable 

scientific research. Viewed from a unique and unconventional 

perspective, Earth’s geographic attributes can also be a surprising 

source of awe-inspiring art.

That unique perspective is space. The artists for the Earth as Art 

Three exhibit are the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites, which 

orbit approximately 705 kilometers (438 miles) above the Earth’s 

surface. While studying the images these satellites beam down daily, 

researchers are often struck by the sheer beauty of the scenes. Such 

images inspire the imagination and go beyond scientific value to 

remind us how stunning, intricate, and simply amazing our planet’s 

features can be.

Instead of paint, the medium for these works of art is light. But 

Landsat satellite sensors don’t see light as human eyes do; instead, 

they see radiant energy reflected from Earth’s surface in certain 

wavelengths, or bands, of red, green, blue, and infrared light. When 

these different bands are combined into a single image, remarkable 

patterns, colors, and shapes emerge.

The Earth as Art Three exhibit provides fresh and inspiring glimpses 

of different parts of our planet’s complex surface. The images in this 

collection were chosen solely based on their aesthetic appeal. Many 

of the images have been manipulated to enhance color variations or 

details. They are not intended for scientific interpretation—only for 

your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
Algerian Abstract What look like pale yellow paint 

streaks slashing through a mosaic of mottled colors are 

ridges of wind-blown sand that make up Erg Iguidi, an 

area of ever-shifting sand dunes extending from Algeria 

into Mauritania in northwestern Africa. Erg Iguidi is one 

of several Saharan ergs, or sand seas, where individual 

dunes often surpass 500 meters—nearly a third of a 

mile—in both width and height.

Anyuyskiy Volcano The prominent crimson streak 

in the center of this image represents the remains of an 

extensive lava and mud flow. Its source is the currently 

dormant Anyuyskiy Volcano (orange circular shape 

at the right end of the streak) in northeastern Russia. 

Remote and largely inaccessible, the region is a rugged 

collection of towering volcanic peaks, steep valleys, and 

wild, snow-fed rivers and streams.

Algerian Sahara This abstract in browns and 

grays from central Algeria shows that some parts of 

Africa’s Sahara Desert contain much more than dunes 

of wind-blown sand. Barren ridges and fragmented 

mountains (lower right) border a vast expanse of arid 

plains etched with a complex system of dry streambeds. 

The streambeds contain water for brief periods following 

rare, intense rains that often cause flash floods.
Byrd Glacier Truly a river of ice, Antarctica’s 

relatively fast-moving Byrd Glacier courses 

through the Transantarctic Mountains at a rate of 

0.8 kilometers (0.5 miles) per year. More than 180 

kilometers (112 miles) long, the glacier flows down from 

the polar plateau (left) to the Ross Ice Shelf (right). Long, 

sweeping flow lines are crossed in places by much 

shorter lines, which are deep cracks in the ice called 

crevasses. The conspicuous red patches indicate areas 

of exposed rock.

Belcher Islands Like sweeping brushstrokes of 

pink and green, the Belcher Islands meander across the 

deep blue of Canada’s Hudson Bay. The islands’ only 

inhabitants live in the small town of Sanikiluaq, near the 

upper end of the middle island. Despite the green hues 

in this image, these rocky islands are too cold to sustain 

more than a smattering of low-growing vegetation.

Barreal Blanco San Juan, Argentina, nestles in a 

fertile valley flanked by arid mountains. Croplands and 

vineyards (green) abut the metropolitan area on the 

San Juan River. The white “teardrop” (lower left) is an 

ancient lakebed called Barreal Blanco. It is one of the 

best places in the world for carrovelismo, or landsailing, 

thanks to the steady winds that sweep across this flat, 

unobstructed expanse of hard-packed sediment.
Caribbean Luxury The Caicos Islands (pronounced 

KAY-kohss) in the northern Caribbean are a popular 

tourist attraction, renowned for their beautiful beaches, 

clear waters, scuba diving, and luxury resorts. The 

islands lie primarily along the northern perimeter of the 

submerged Caicos Bank (turquoise), a shallow limestone 

platform formed of sand, algae, and coral reefs covering 

6,140 square kilometers (2,370 square miles).

Desert Patterns Seen through the “eyes” of a 

satellite sensor, ribbons of Saharan sand dunes seem 

to glow in sunset colors. These patterned stripes are 

part of Erg Chech, a desolate sand sea in southwestern 

Algeria, Africa, where the prevailing winds create an 

endlessly shifting collage of large, linear sand dunes. 

The term “erg” is derived from an Arabic word for a 

field of sand dunes.

Desert to Forest In the American Southwest, 

transitions from one ecosystem to another can be 

dramatic and abrupt. This certainly is true in northern 

Arizona, USA, where the parched Painted Desert, 

shown here in a palette of purples, adjoins Sitgreaves 

National Forest (shades of green), a realm of pine 

woodlands with abundant wildlife. Within the Painted 

Desert lie the Hopi Buttes, a field of ancient volcanic 

cones, seen here as a scattering of dark, circular 

shapes near the top of the image.
Ghostly Grease Ice Ethereal swirls of grease 

ice appear turquoise against the midnight blue of 

the northern Baltic Sea near the Aland Islands (red) 

between Finland and Sweden. An early stage of sea ice 

formation, grease ice consists of a viscous mix of tiny 

ice crystals and resembles an oil slick on the ocean’s 

surface. Wind and currents constantly shape and 

reshape grease ice into surreal, ghostly patterns.

Erongo Massif The dark heart in this vivid African 

landscape is the Erongo Massif, an isolated, sheerwalled mountain that rises 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) 

above arid Namibian plains. The massif is a remnant of 

a gigantic volcano that was active roughly 150 million 

years ago. At some point, the volcano’s center collapsed 

in upon itself under the weight of overlying lava. Eons of 

erosion by wind and wind-blown sand gradually exposed 

the long-dead volcano’s core of granite and basalt.

Empty Quarter White pinpricks of cloud cast 

ebony shadows on the Rub’ al Khali, or Empty Quarter, 

near the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. 

The lines of wind-sculpted sand are characteristic of 

immense sand deserts, or sand seas, and the Rub’ al 

Khali is the largest desert of this type in the world. A 

highland ridge is just high enough to disturb the flow of 

the lines. In the center of that interruption lies the Saudi 

Arabian town of Sharurah.
Great Barrier Reef What might be mistaken for 

dinosaur bones being unearthed at a paleontological 

dig are some of the individual reefs that make up the 

Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest tropical coral reef 

system. The reef stretches more than 2,000 kilometers 

(1,240 miles) along the coast of Queensland, Australia. It 

supports astoundingly complex and diverse communities 

of marine life and is the largest structure on the planet 

built by living organisms.

Ice Waves Along the southeastern coast of 

Greenland, an intricate network of fjords funnels 

glacial ice to the Atlantic Ocean. During the summer 

melting season, newly calved icebergs join slabs of 

sea ice and older, weathered bergs in an offshore slurry 

that the southward-flowing East Greenland Current 

sometimes swirls into stunning shapes. Exposed rock 

of mountain peaks, tinted red in this image, hints at a 

hidden landscape.

Ice Stars Like distant galaxies amid clouds of 

interstellar dust, chunks of sea ice drift through graceful 

swirls of grease ice in the frigid waters of Foxe Basin 

near Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Sea ice often 

begins as grease ice, a soupy slick of tiny ice crystals on 

the ocean’s surface. As the temperature drops, grease 

ice thickens and coalesces into slabs of more solid ice.
Island Rebound During the last ice age, Akimiski 

Island in Canada’s James Bay lay beneath vast glaciers 

that pressed down with immense force. As the climate 

changed and the ice retreated, Akimiski began a gradual 

rebound. The island’s slow but steady increase in 

elevation is recorded along its naturally terraced edges 

where the coastline seems etched with bathtub rings, 

the result of the rising landmass and wave action at 

previous sea levels.

Impact Tin Bider is an ancient and eroded meteor 

crater on the Tin Rhert Plateau in the Algerian Sahara. 

Tin Bider is nearly 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) in diameter 

and was caused by a meteorite impact in this region of 

northern Africa roughly 70 million years ago. The other 

streaks near the crater are unrelated to the impact 

event. These rock folds are geologic features older 

than the crater.

Icelandic Tiger This stretch of Iceland’s northern 

coast resembles a tiger’s head complete with stripes 

of orange, black, and white. The tiger’s mouth is the 

great Eyjafjörður, a deep fjord that juts into the mainland 

between steep mountains. The name means “island 

fjord,” derived from the tiny, tear-shaped Hrísey Island 

near its mouth. The ice-free port city of Akureyri lies 

near the fjord’s narrow tip, and is Iceland’s second 

largest population center after the capital, Reykjavik.
Lake District A popular holiday destination, the 

Lake District in northwestern England is a region of 

picturesque mountains and long, narrow lakes. Most of 

the lakes lie in U-shaped valleys that were carved by 

glaciers during the last ice age. Morecambe Bay, below 

the Lake District, opens into the Irish Sea. This large 

expanse of intertidal sand and mudflats is notorious for 

its quicksand and tides that are said to move “as fast as 

a horse can run.”

Meandering Mississippi Small, blocky shapes 

of towns, fields, and pastures surround the graceful 

swirls and whorls of the Mississippi River. Countless 

oxbow lakes and cutoffs accompany the meandering 

river south of Memphis, Tennessee, on the border 

between Arkansas and Mississippi, USA. The “mighty 

Mississippi” is the largest river system in North America.

Lake Eyre Do you see a scary face looking back at 

you? The hollow-appearing eyes, narrow nose, and 

slash of a mouth are inundated patches of shallow Lake 

Eyre (pronounced “air”). Deep in the desert country of 

northern South Australia, Lake Eyre is an ephemeral 

feature of this flat, parched landscape. When seasonal 

rains are abundant, water fills the lakebed to some 

degree. During the last 150 years, Lake Eyre has filled 

completely only three times. When brimming, it is 

Australia’s largest lake.
No Man’s Land A study in shades of blue and brown 

is actually one of the harshest landscapes on Earth. This 

glimpse of Africa’s Sahara Desert, located near where 

the borders of Mali, Niger, and Algeria converge, is truly 

a no man’s land, a world of sand and rock without roads 

or settlements. The horizontal lines across the top half of 

the image are intrusions of igneous rock, where magma 

poked up to the surface from deep underground.

Mount Elgon Clouds encircle the lofty rim of Africa’s 

Mount Elgon, a huge, long-extinct volcano on the border 

between Uganda and Kenya. The solitary volcano has 

one of the world’s largest intact calderas, a cauldron-like 

central depression. The caldera is about 6.5 kilometers 

(4 miles) across and formed following an eruption, 

when the emptied magma chamber collapsed under the 

weight of volcanic rock above it.

Meighen Island A veil of blowing snow nearly 

obscures Meighen Island (left) off the northern coast 

of Canada. Across the Sverdrup Channel lies the much 

larger Axel Heiberg Island, where glaciers (blue) huddle 

among mountain peaks (yellow) and flow into deep 

fjords. No evidence of human occupation has ever been 

found on Meighen Island.
Okavango Delta Like a watercolor in which a 

brushstroke of dark green has bled into a damp spot on 

the paper, southern Africa’s Okavango River spreads 

across the pale, parched landscape of northern 

Botswana to become the lush Okavango Delta. The 

delta forms where the river empties into a basin in the 

Kalahari Desert, creating a maze of lagoons, channels, 

and islands where vegetation flourishes, even in the dry 

season, and wildlife abounds.

Robinson Glacier Lines and shapes etched into 

the surface of Antarctica’s Robinson Glacier hint at 

the slow but inevitable movements of this giant river of 

ice. Patterns of lines may be icefalls, where a glacier 

cascades over rock, or a series of crevasses, massive 

cracks that form as different parts of a glacier move at 

slightly different speeds. Robinson Glacier flows down to 

the continent’s coast, where glacial ice meets mammoth 

slabs of sea ice caught in the frigid embrace of the 

Southern Ocean.

Remote Tundra Skeletal extensions of land reach 

like bony fingers across a section of Liverpool Bay along 

the northern edge of Canada’s Northwest Territories. 

Only small villages are thinly scattered in this remote 

and inhospitable region of Arctic tundra bordering the 

Beaufort Sea. The relatively flat landscape is dotted with 

shallow lakes during the extremely brief summer season.
Rugged Terrain Hues of green and orange highlight 

the extreme ruggedness of the mountainous terrain in 

eastern Afghanistan, near its border with Pakistan. The 

dark green areas on the right side along rivers indicate 

agricultural areas. Snow-fed streams allow sufficient 

irrigation to transform relatively arid soils into productive 

fields.

Roof of the World Central Asia’s Tibetan Plateau 

is justifiably nicknamed “the roof of the world”—its 

average elevation is more than 4,500 meters (14,764 feet). 

It is the world’s highest and largest plateau, covering an 

area roughly four times the size of Texas. Tectonic forces 

have long shaped the Tibetan Plateau’s crumpled and 

uplifted mountain ridges. This scene also features some 

of the area’s deep, glacier-fed lakes. The two largest 

lakes in this scene are Migriggyangzham near the upper 

left and Dorsoidong just below it.

Rocky Mountain Trench What appears to be 

a stroke of thick red paint is actually a remarkable 

interplay of light and cloud in the Canadian Rockies. 

Angling through them is part of the Rocky Mountain 

Trench, a valley that extends from Montana, USA, to 

just south of the Yukon Territory. Low clouds filled a part 

of the Trench near the border between the Canadian 

provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The lightreflecting nature of the clouds coupled with low sun 

elevation resulted in this startling effect.
San Luis, Argentina Straight highways fan out 

like spokes on a wheel from the Argentine city of San 

Luis. To the right of the city are croplands that resemble 

colorful confetti. Founded in 1594, San Luis lies at the tip 

of the Sierra de San Luis and is largely surrounded by 

flat-to-rolling fertile plains.

Sierra de Velasco Shimmering blues and greens 

accentuate the textures of the Sierra de Velasco 

Mountains of northern Argentina. The urban area 

(pinkish circle) near the lower left part of the mountain 

range is La Rioja, the capital of the province of La Rioja. 

Follow the foothills to the upper right, where the city of 

San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca lies near extensive 

vineyards and fruit-growing areas (blue blocky shapes).

Siberian Ribbons Vivid colors and bizarre 

shapes come together in an image that could be 

an imaginative illustration for a fantasy story. This 

labyrinth of exotic features is present along the edge 

of Russia’s Chaunskaya Bay (vivid blue half circle) in 

northeastern Siberia. Two major rivers, the Chaun and 

Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn opens into 

the Arctic Ocean. Ribbon lakes and bogs are present 

throughout the area, created by depressions left by 

receding glaciers.
The Dardzha Monster Looking like a monstrous 

ogre with something gooey in its mouth, the Dardzha 

Peninsula in western Turkmenistan lies among the 

shallow coastal terraces of the Caspian Sea. Strong 

winds create huge sand dunes near the water, some of 

which are partly submerged. Further inland, the dunes 

transition to low sand plains.

Spilled Paint Like poster paints run wild, this 

image reveals an eclectic montage of landscapes in 

Iran’s largest desert, the Dasht-e Kavir, or Great Salt 

Desert. The word kavir is Persian for salt marsh. The 

almost uninhabited region covers an area of more than 

77,000 square kilometers (29,730 square miles) and is a 

mix of dry streambeds, desert plateaus, mudflats, and 

salt marshes. Extreme heat, dramatic daily temperature 

swings, and violent storms are the norm in this 

inhospitable place.

Sor Kaydak The intricate lines angling and crisscrossing over the landscape are roads in extreme 

southwestern Kazakhstan. The turquoise areas to the 

left are salt flats and marshes, some parts of which are 

submerged (dark blue). The water body is Sor Kaydak, 

which was once a gulf of the Caspian Sea. As water 

levels have dropped, curious patterns in the landscape 

emerged that reveal old tributaries.
The Dhofar Difference Much of Oman is 

desert, but the Arabian Sea coast in the Dhofar region 

represents a startling difference in climate. This coastal 

region catches the monsoon rains, or khareef, during 

the summer months. Drenching rains fall primarily on 

the mountainous ridge that separates the lush, fertile 

areas along the coast from the arid interior, recharging 

streams, waterfalls, and springs that provide plentiful 

water supplies in the fertile lowlands for the remainder 

of the year.

Waziristan Hills Deep purple and green hues 

enhance the Waziristan Hills, a mountainous region 

of northwest Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. 

A formidable landscape, the Waziristan Hills are a 

hodgepodge of steep, rugged hills split by narrow 

passes and deep gorges. Rivers coursing down 

from the mountains provide water for agriculture 

in a region of scanty rainfall.

Van Gogh from Space In the style of Van 

Gogh’s painting “Starry Night,” massive congregations 

of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water 

around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. 

Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form 

the first link in nearly all ocean food chains. Population 

explosions, or blooms, of phytoplankton, like the one 

shown here, occur when deep currents bring nutrients 

up to sunlit surface waters, fueling the growth and 

reproduction of these tiny plants.
Yukon Delta After beginning in northern British 

Columbia and flowing through Yukon in Canada, the 

Yukon River crosses Alaska, USA, before emptying 

into the Bering Sea. Countless lakes, sloughs, and 

ponds are scattered throughout this scene of the Yukon 

Delta. The river’s sinuous, branching waterways seem 

like blood vessels branching out to enclose an organ. 

It is one of the largest river deltas in the world, and 

currently (2010) protected as part of the Yukon Delta 

National Wildlife Refuge.


I S BN 9 78 - 1 - 4 11 3- 28 61 - 7

9 7 8 1 4 1 1 3 2 8 6 1 7

Contact for additional information

Printed on recycled paper Printed on recycled paper

U.S. Geological Survey

Earth Resources Observation 

 and Science (EROS) Center

47914 252nd Street

Sioux Falls, SD 57198-0001

Tel: 800-252-4547

Tel: 605-594-6151

Fax: 605-594-6589

E-mail: custserv@usgs.gov

Web: http://eros.usgs.gov