Acquired January 16, 2005, this true-color image shows part of the inhospitable limestone landscape of western Madagascar, with bare rocks and vegetation forming a patchwork of gray and green.
Each year millions of monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles back and forth from wintering grounds in Mexico to their breeding locations in the eastern United States and Canada. In the fall, the monarchs return to just 12 forested mountaintops in central Mexico, where they form colonies in which millions of butterflies cluster on the trunks and branches of the trees. Despite the creation of protected areas and reserves, illegal logging has been steadily shrinking this unique, critical monarch habitat.
Beginning in late August 2008, fire broke out near the western border of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve. By late September, some 40,000 square kilometers (about 15,500 square miles) had burned, scorching roughly 80 percent of the park, according to news reports.
This astronaut photograph illustrates the varying character of surfaces on Sir Bani Yas, an island in the Persian Gulf near the west coast of the United Arab Emirates.
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.