Muddy brown water spreads into Australia's Lake Eyre through a triangular delta in this natural-color Landsat image from May 9, 2009. The water transformed the dry basin into a vast inland sea where flocks of birds gathered to breed.
The light tan oval in this image is the floor of a lake in central Italy that has been drained by a tunnel dug through the surrounding hills. Numerous rectangular fields occupy the former lake bottom—now one of the most fertile regions of Italy. The area is still referred to as “Fucine Lake,” even though the lake has been dry for nearly 150 years.