Acquired June 12, 2010, this natural-color image shows camel-colored sand dunes marching past Mongolia’s Har Nuur.
Published Jun 27, 2010
This astronaut photograph shows classic large and small sand masses of the central Sahara Desert, where wind is a more powerful land-shaping agent than water.
Published Jan 19, 2009
Layers of dunes march across a sand sea in the east-central Tenéré Desert of Niger in this astronaut photo from December 1, 2009.
Published Dec 28, 2009
Intensive sand mining has dramatically changed the northern branch of China’s largest freshwater lake.
Published Mar 18, 2016
Har Nuur (“Black Lake”) is located in western Mongolia’s Valley of Lakes, part of a system of closed basins stretching across central Asia. These basins are the remnants of larger paleolakes (paleo- means “ancient”) that began to shrink approximately five thousand years ago as regional climate became drier. This oblique (looking at an angle) astronaut photograph captures the dynamic nature of the landscape of Har Nuur. The lake is encircled by sand dune fields that encroach on the lower slopes of the Tobhata Mountains to the west and south. Gaps in the mountains have been exploited by sand dunes moving eastward, indicating westerly winds. The most striking example is a series of dunes entering Har Nuur along its southwestern shoreline.
Published Oct 16, 2006
White sand dunes spill across the Snake River Plain in a wide arc in this detailed, photo-like image acquired by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s EO-1 satellite on September 25, 2010.
Published Sep 29, 2010
Ancient rivers and linear dunes decorate the arid landscape.
Published Apr 8, 2013
Winds shape the sands that were left behind by an ancient river.
Published Jun 4, 2012
