This detailed astronaut photograph shows the salt ponds of one of Africa’s major producers of soda ash (sodium carbonate) and salt. Soda ash is used for making glass, in metallurgy, in the detergent industry, and in chemical manufacture. The image shows a small part of the great salt flats of central Botswana known as the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans.
Published May 13, 2007
Colorful, mineral-rich salt flats are nestled between the Promontory Mountains and the Great Salt Lake.
Published Oct 4, 2020
Northeastern Nevada has a geological feature rich with gold.
Published Aug 27, 2017
Natural vegetation and irrigated farmland along the Snake River Plain in Idaho use dramatically different amounts of water during the growing season.
Published Jan 26, 2010
The salt produced from tidal marshes in southern France is the product of ideal climate conditions and careful management.
Published Apr 4, 2019
Utah Lake and the Wasatch Mountains frame a beautiful landscape around Provo.
Published Sep 26, 2016
New maps show the fluctuating river and lake levels in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Published Jul 16, 2016
An arid region grew even drier between 2003 and 2009 due to human consumption of water for drinking and agriculture.
Published Mar 13, 2013
The city’s economic engine is also a worrisome source of pollution.
Published Mar 16, 2019
For more than 100 years, groups in the western United States have fought over water. During the 1880s, sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers argued over drinking water for their livestock on the high plains. In 1913, the city of Los Angeles began to draw water away from small agricultural communities in Owen Valley, leaving a dusty dry lake bed. In the late 1950s, construction of the Glen Canyon Dam catalyzed the American environmental movement. Today, farmers are fighting fishermen, environmentalists, and Native American tribes over the water in the Upper Klamath River Basin. The Landsat 7 satellite, launched by NASA and operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, documented an extreme drought in the area along the California/Oregon border in the spring of 2001.
Published Sep 8, 2001
A new study found that the abundance of these floating plants has increased due to urbanization.
Published Sep 2, 2020
Underground channels have supplied towns in southeastern Morocco for centuries.
Published Nov 19, 2016
The tiny amount of water vapor in our atmosphere has an outsized influence on the planet as a potent greenhouse gas.
Published Oct 7, 2010
In October 2016, one of America’s largest lakes reached its lowest level on record.
Published Nov 3, 2016
The fast-growing city has polluted waterways and a growing demand for clean tap water.
Published Apr 11, 2017
Groundwater supplies are decreasing across much of the world.
Published Nov 1, 2013
otswana ranks first among the world’s gem-quality diamond producers, and diamond mining makes up 70 percent of the nation’s export revenue. The Jwaneng Diamond Mine, in south-central Botswana, sits atop the convergence of three kimberlite pipes—diamond-rich geologic formations. Because the pipes meet just below the surface and cover some 520,000 square meters (128.5 acres) at ground level, the diamonds are mined from an open pit rather than a mine tunneled below the surface.
Published Oct 26, 2008
Although it is now the largest desert on Earth, during the last ice age the Sahara was a savannah with a climate similar to that of present-day Kenya and Tanzania. The annual rainfall was much greater than it is now, creating many rivers and lakes that are now hidden under shifting sands or exposed as barren salt flats. Over several hundred thousand years, the rains also filled a series of vast underground aquifers. Modern African nations are now mining this fossil water to support irrigated farming projects.
Published Mar 2, 2002
