Fine particles of pulverized rock absorb and scatter sunlight in ways that can give water a striking blue-green color.
Published May 20, 2019
Long and short. Deep and shallow. Salty and fresh. Blue and brown. These are Africa’s Lake Tanganyika and Lake Rukwa.
Published Jun 20, 2019
Floodwaters have worked their way through a series of parched channels, watering holes, and lagoons to start filling the iconic Australian lake.
Published May 28, 2019
The lake is mostly inhospitable to life, except for a few species adapted to its warm, salty, and alkaline water.
Published May 8, 2017
The largest freshwater lake in Mongolia is known as the “sister” to Lake Baikal. Together they hold 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet.
Published Dec 18, 2017
Sitting atop the Andes plateau on the border between Peru and Bolivia, the lake is the highest major body of navigable water in the world and the largest lake in South America.
Published Nov 23, 2015
Irrigation from Lake Nasser, one of the world’s largest man-made lakes, has increased the amount of arable land and crop production in Egypt.
Published Jul 8, 2020
Acquired September 15, 2010, this natural-color image shows flooding along the northern and eastern margins of Pakistan’s Manchhar Lake.
Published Sep 17, 2010
Lago de Valencia (Lake Valencia) is located in north-central Venezuela and is the largest freshwater lake in the country. The lake was formed approximately 2-3 million years ago due to faulting and subsequent damming of the Valencia River. The lake has been completely dry during several discrete periods of its geologic history. Since 1976 Lake Valencia water levels have risen due to diversion of water from neighboring watersheds—it currently acts as a reservoir for the surrounding urban centers (such as Maracay).
Published Nov 22, 2004
Lake Eyre did something in 2011 that it doesn’t do very often: it took on new water.
Published Dec 19, 2011
In May 2016, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam reached its lowest level since the 1930s.
Published May 27, 2016
The fingerprints of human civilization are all over the lake in eastern China.
Published Jan 10, 2015
Acquired September 7, 2010, and September 13, 2010, these false-color images show floodwaters rising along a massive lake that branched off the Indus River.
Published Sep 13, 2010
The Great Salt Lake of northern Utah is a remnant of glacial Lake Bonneville that extended over much of present-day western Utah and into the neighboring states of Nevada and Idaho approximately 32,000 to 14,000 years ago. The north arm of the lake, displayed in this astronaut photograph from April 30, 2007, typically has twice the salinity of the rest of the lake due to impoundment of water by a railroad causeway that crosses the lake from east to west. The causeway restricts water flow, and the separation has led to a striking division in the types of algae and bacteria found in the north and south arms of the lake.
Published Jul 16, 2007
The lake in central Africa is in the middle of a whiting event caused by calcium carbonate precipitation.
Published Apr 26, 2016
Astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle and Space Station have tracked regional environmental changes spanning decades. Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake, serves as one example of an area experiencing significant changes that have been well documented from space. Over the past twenty years, the lake’s water levels have decreased in conjunction with increasing development from the fast-growing city of Guadalajara.
Published Aug 30, 2004
Sitting near Australia’s rugged southern coast, the South Australian town of Mount Gambier is built on the side of an extinct volcano. The caldera of the volcano has filled with rainwater, forming a very deep lake that provides the town with water. The large caldera lake is called Blue Lake due to a rather peculiar characteristic: the water turns a brilliant cobalt blue during the summer and early fall.
Published Aug 30, 2008
Acquired on August 11, 1984 (top), and September 1, 2009 (bottom), these true-color images show dramatic expansion of Devils Lake in North Dakota. In the 1990s, the lake began flooding, spilling into neighboring Stump Lake.
Published Feb 14, 2010
