Tournament Earth 2015 has come to a dramatic end. Despite some tough match ups, the colorful faults of Xinjiang fought off a bolt of lightning (as seen from the International Space Station), taking the #2 seed from the art division all the way to the championship.
This year’s victory was a first for an image from a Landsat satellite. In 2014, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra captured the winning shot. In 2013, it was the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. This was also the first year that an image not associated with the Canary Islands won the tournament.
As noted in our original Image of the Day, Piqiang Fault is a northwest trending strike-slip fault that runs roughly perpendicular to a series of thrust faults. The thrust faults are marked by the colorful southeast-to-northeast running ridges. The ridges are offset by about 3 kilometers (2 miles) due to the strike-slip fault. For another perspective on the faults, see how they look in the near infrared and shortwave infrared (below). In the near infrared, variations in mineral content, vegetation, and water cause the patterns of light and dark. Below that, comparing the differences between 3 shortwave infrared bands highlights the mineral geology surrounding the fault.
Though obvious from above, the Piqiang Fault can be a challenge to see from the ground. “You can’t actually see the fault unless you hike into the mountains,” explained Sebastian Turner, a geologist who has conducted studies in the area. If you would like to learn more about the geology of this area, I would recommend looking through Turner’s study or this one by Mark Allen.
Thank you for voting!