The Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran present an impressive landscape of long linear ridges and valleys. Formed by collision of the Eurasian and Arabian tectonic plates, the ridges and valleys extend hundreds of kilometers. Stresses induced in the Earth’s crust by the collision caused extensive folding of the preexisting layered sedimentary rocks. Subsequent erosion removed softer rocks, such as mudstone and siltstone while leaving harder rocks, such as limestone and dolomite. This differential erosion formed the linear ridges of the Zagros Mountains. This astronaut photograph of the southwestern edge of the Zagros mountain belt includes another common feature of the region—a salt dome (Kuh-e-Namak or “mountain of salt” in Farsi).
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.