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Qarhan Playa
36.826290°,95.273682° - Google Timelapse
Numerous saltwater evaporation ponds have been built in China’s Qarhan Playa since the early 1990s. Located in Qinghai Province, Qarhan was once a single unitary lake and is now an expansive salt flat covering 2,261 square miles (5,856 square km). It is heavily exploited for its valuable reserves of salt, potash, lithium, iodine and other minerals.
Great Pyramids of Giza
29.979234°,31.134201° - Maxar
The Great Pyramids of Giza are located on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. Dating back to 2580 BC, the Great Pyramid, the largest structure at the site, is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one to remain largely intact. With an estimated 2.3 million stone blocks weighing 2 to 30 tons each, the 481-foot-tall (146-meter) pyramid was the tallest structure in the world for more than 3,800 years.
Rhine River Drought
51.233333°,6.783333° - Planet
Hot, dry conditions caused water levels on the Rhine River — Western Europe’s most important waterway — to reach a record low this summer. Many points along the river dried to less than half of normal depths, too shallow for ships carrying important cargo to pass. This Overview shows low water levels of the Rhine flowing through Düsseldorf, Germany, in August 2022.
Austin
30.270565°,-97.738784° - Nearmap
Austin is the capital and fourth-most populous city of Texas, with just under one million inhabitants. It has been one of the fastest growing cities in the USA since 2010 and is experiencing a skyscraper boom, with recent construction on new office, hotel and residential buildings. This Overview focuses on Downtown Austin, along the Colorado River, with the Texas State Capitol Building at center.
Pakistan Flooding
29.824510°,70.787425° - Planet
Severe floods have inundated Pakistan this summer, caused by heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers. The Indus River, shown here, has overrun its banks in several provinces, turning into a lake 62 miles (100 km) wide at some points. Experts say around one-third of the country is under water and that the flooding, linked to climate change, is the worst in Pakistan’s history.
Crowds at Buckingham Palace
51.501716°,-0.141411° - Wikipedia Commons by SAC Matthew 'Gerry' Gerrard RAF/ © MoD Crown Copyright 2016
This Overview shows a crowd at Buckingham Palace in London, England during Queen Elizabeth II’s official 90th birthday celebrations in 2016. The Queen passed away yesterday, September 8th, at the age of 96 after more than 70 years on the throne. Her reign is the longest of any British monarch and the longest recorded of any female of state in history.
Naypyidaw
19.747500°,96.115000° - Google Timelapse
Naypyidaw, the capital city of Myanmar, was constructed on undeveloped land between 2002 and 2012. It became the capital in 2006, replacing Yangon as a more centrally located and less congested location for government offices. The city is divided into a number of zones, including military, diplomatic, ministry, hotel and residential, with about 924,000 inhabitants.
São Martinho do Porto
39.513000°,-9.134000° - Maxar
Calm waves roll into São Martinho do Porto — a village in Portugal with a shell-shape bay surrounded by a sand beach. The bay formed when a strip of land along the coast was eroded and then divided by the Atlantic Ocean. Because the opening to the ocean is still relatively small (825 feet or 250 meters), the waves that roll into the beach are almost always calm.
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
37.504215°,-122.036887° - Maxar
Salt ponds are seen on San Francisco Bay in northern California, USA. Here water is channelled into large ponds and exits through natural evaporation. The salt that remains can then be collected. The massive ponds get their vibrant reddish colors from the algae that thrive in the extremely salty water. Approximately 80% of this wetlands area – approximately 16,500 acres – has been developed for salt mining.
Australia Burn Scars
-19.733361°,121.245694° - Google Timelapse
Burn scars have, in recent years, begun covering more of the landscape around Eighty Mile Beach in Western Australia. This area, located within the Great Sandy Desert, is hot, dry and subject to frequent thunder and lightning storms. This, combined with global warming, has caused wildfires to increase in both frequency and intensity.
Llancanelo Lake
-35.629583°,-69.084883° - Google Timelapse
Llancanelo Lake, in the south of Mendoza Province, Argentina, has almost completely dried up since the mid-1980s. At its peak, it covered an area of 250 square miles (650 square km) and sustained a habitat of about 150,000 aquatic birds. Its near disappearance has been caused by a lack of inflow from the Malargüe River and a loss of water through evapotranspiration and runoff.
Ganges Delta
22.326515°,90.993407° - Google Timelapse
Islands of the Ganges Delta, in Bangladesh, change shape over the years as the Meghna River drains into the Bay of Bengal. Hatiya, the largest island seen at top, is frequently subject to cyclones, monsoons, floods and destructive ocean waves. Despite these risks, islands like these are densely populated; in fact, more than 125 million people live on the Ganges Delta.
Louvre Abu Dhabi
24.533289°,54.397739° - Maxar
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art museum located on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The 24,000-square-meter (260,000-square-foot) structure has a "floating dome" design made of 7,850 aluminium stars of varying sizes, which tessellate over eight layers to create a perforated roof that allows sunlight through to the spaces below. It uses the Louvre name through an agreement with France and has a stated intent to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western art.
Salar de Atacama
-23.500000°,-68.250000° - Planet
Salar de Atacama is the largest salt flat in Chile and the third largest in the world, spanning 1,200 square miles (3,000 sq. km). It is the world’s largest and purest active source of lithium, containing more than one-quarter of the world’s lithium reserves. In this Overview, lithium-rich waters sit in a series of evaporation ponds before being extracted as lithium carbonate — a key ingredient in specific industrial salts, chemicals, and batteries.
Islamabad
33.693056°,73.063889° - Planet
Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, was built as a planned city in the 1960s and has grown rapidly in the decades since. It had just 204,000 residents in the early 1980s, but its high standards of living, safety and green spaces have attracted people from all over Pakistan, bringing its population to 3.1 million. The city is divided into five zones, two of which contain numerous square-shaped residential sectors.
Mount Sumbing Terrace Farming
-7.418305°,110.089472° - Maxar
Small villages and terraced farmland surround the slopes of Mount Sumbing in Central Java, Indonesia. The lands of this region, though quite steep, are enriched with volcanic sediments and thus incredibly fertile. The primary crop grown here is wet rice, but tea, coffee and tobacco are also commonly grown in Java’s highlands.
Siling Lake
31.851900°,88.633910° - Planet
Siling Lake has grown gradually since the late 1980s and may soon become the largest lake in Tibet. The lake’s surface area, currently 720 square miles (1,865 square km) is on the rise due to glacial melting and may soon surpass Lake Namtso — Tibet’s largest lake at 740 square miles (1,920 square km). Glacier retreat on the Tibetan Plateau was 50% faster from 1990-2010 than it was from 1956-1990.
Ho Chi Minh City
10.775556°,106.701944° - Planet
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest city, has expanded rapidly in recent decades. Its population has nearly tripled since the mid-1990s, from about 3.6 million to upwards of 10 million. As a result, its urban core along the Saigon River has steadily grown in size and density.
Lake Balaton
46.850000°,17.720000° - Planet
Lake Balaton is a freshwater lake in western Hungary. With a surface area of 230 square miles (600 square km), it is the largest lake in Central Europe and also one of the region's foremost tourist destinations. Balaton gets its milky green color from the algae growing in its shallow waters.
Toshka Lakes
23.100000°,30.900000° - Google Timelapse
Toshka Lakes is a group of recently formed endorheic lakes in the Sahara Desert of Egypt. They began to emerge in late 1998 when excess water from Lake Nasser overflowed, filling a nearby limestone valley. The rise and fall of the lakes over the past two decades has depended on fluctuations in the flow of the Nile River — in 2012 they had almost dried up, but began filling once again in 2019.
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