A dengue fever outbreak has plagued Rio de Janeiro since January 2002. Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease. The elimination of standing water, which is a breeding ground for the mosquitoes, is a primary defense against mosquito-borne diseases like dengue. Removing such water remains a difficult problem in many urban regions.
The wide, multi-island zone in the Rio Negro (Black River) shown in this astronaut photograph from September 2, 2006, is one of two, long “archipelagoes” upstream of the city of Manaus (not shown) in central Amazonia. Sixty kilometers of the total 120-kilemeter length of this archipelago appear in this image.
Acquired September 8, 2010, and September 9, 2009, these false-color images show changes to the landscape of southern Mexico wrought by heavy rains in the summer of 2010.