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One regular dose of Earth from above
New Overviews are posted regularly on Instagram — follow @dailyoverview to see them as soon as they go up.
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° - Vantor
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.
Great Green Wall
16.528219°,-16.091333° - Vantor
The Great Green Wall is an anti-desertification initiative underway in Africa’s Sahel region, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. It intends to restore 250 million acres (100 million hectares) of degraded land by 2030 by planting a 5,000-mile (8,000-kilometer) tree line. These Overviews show a section of the wall on the border of Mauritania and Senegal developing between 2018 and 2019. If effective, the Great Green Wall will stop the advancement of the desert, absorb 250 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, and create 350,000 rural jobs.
Ordos Coal Mines
39.840222°,110.093138° - Google Timelapse
New coal mines have emerged throughout Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China in recent years, and rapid urban development has occurred simultaneously. As China’s primary coal-producing region, Ordos is expected to produce nearly 1.2 billion tons of coal this year — more than any other country in the world. This mining boom has caused its population to grow from 1.3 million in 2000 to nearly 2.2 million today.
Parking Lot For Illegal Volkswagens
34.597500°,-117.383056° - Nearmap
Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California is usually used as a graveyard for retired airplanes, but between 2016-2020 served as a parking lot for thousands of diesel-powered Volkswagens. Following an emissions scandal in 2015, Volkswagen leased enough land here to park 21,000 vehicles after giving customers the option to sell back their cars. More than 350,000 customers elected to do so, causing the vehicles to sit in locations like this until they were repaired or approved for export.
Peruvian Coast Farmland
-8.411740°,-78.836610° - Google Timelapse
Agricultural development has greened the coastline of northern Peru, made possible by a decades-long irrigation project. The Chavimochic Special Project, initiated in the 1960s, extends over much of the La Libertad Region to irrigate 556 square miles (1,440 square kilometers) of farmland, nearly half of which was gained from desert. Numerous export crops, like asparagus and artichokes, are grown here.
Zhengzhou
34.764000°,113.684000° - Planet
Zhengzhou is one of the fastest-growing cities in central China, its population climbing from 800,000 to 6.6 million since 1980. Much of its growth has come a manufacturing boom; in fact, it contains the largest smartphone production site in the world and is also known as "iPhone City". Zhengzhou’s metropolitan area covers 1,649 square miles (4,271 square kilometers) along the southern bank of the Yellow River.
Oregon Deforestation
43.845586°,-123.308428° - Google Timelapse
This Overview shows deforestation south of Eugene, Oregon, through clearcutting — a methodical practice of uniformly cutting down trees in a contained area. The process is controversial for its effect on the land’s topsoil, which is also removed with the trees leaving patches of gray deforested areas. Some regrowth can also be seen; Oregon’s land-use laws require loggers to replant five or more trees for every tree that is cut down.
Great Salt Lake
41.166667°,-112.533333° - Google Timelapse
The Great Salt Lake has shrunk by more than two-thirds in 40 years, from a surface area of 3,330 square miles (8,500 square kilometers) in 1980 to a record-low 950 square miles (2,460 square kilometers) in 2021. This trend threatens the residents of nearby Salt Lake City, Utah and millions of other species that depend on the lake such as migratory birds. As more of the lake bed — which contains high levels of arsenic — is exposed, the surrounding atmosphere may become poisoned by toxic dust.
Meta Platforms Campus
37.481292°,-122.153642° - Nearmap
Meta Platform's (formerly Facebook) newest campus in Menlo Park, California was designed by architect Frank Gehry and constructed between 2017 and 2018. The office building, called MPK 21, has nearly 10 acres (4 hectares) of interior space and a 3.6-acre (1.5-hectare) rooftop garden with 200 trees. A water recycling system saves the building around 17 million gallons of water per year, and 1.4 megawatts of solar panels provide a renewable energy source.
Taj Mahal
27.175000°,78.041944° - Airbus Space
The Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum in Agra, India. Commissioned in 1632 by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as the resting place for his wife. The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque, a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a fortified wall.
Optus Stadium
-31.951111°,115.889028° - Nearmap
Optus Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Perth, Western Australia, constructed between 2014 and 2018. Built on the site of a former golf course, the 60,000-seat stadium can accommodate various sporting and entertainment events including Australian rules football, cricket, rugby and soccer. It is the third-largest stadium in Australia.
Sittaung River
17.081290°,96.955754° - Google Timelapse
The Sittaung River shifts course over time as it empties into the Gulf of Martaban in southern Myanmar. This shifting is partially caused by a tidal bore at the mouth of the river — a strong current that pushes back against the river, temporarily reversing its flow. The Sittaung discharges an average of 12 cubic miles (50 cubic kilometers of water per year.
Erbil
36.191188°,44.009189° - Planet
Erbil is the capital and most populated city in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, with around 1.5 million inhabitants. At the city’s center is the Citadel of Erbil, a 102,000-square-meter (1.1 million-square-foot) mound believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world. Surrounding the Citadel are a series of concentric ring roads.
New Suez Canal
30.537447°,32.334090° - Vantor
The Suez Canal was expanded between 2014 and 2015, when a second channel was dredged near the city of Ismailia, Egypt. This channel, dubbed the “New Suez Canal,” spans 22 miles (35 kilometers) between the Great Bitter Lakes and El Ballah bypasses, allowing ships to transit the canal in both directions simultaneously. It nearly doubled the capacity of the Suez Canal, from 49 to 97 ships per day.
Santa Cruz Resettlement
-16.622791°,-62.910703° - Planet
Large tracts of rainforest in Santa Cruz, Bolivia have undergone major deforestation since the 1980’s to make way for resettlement and agricultural projects. The pinwheel-patterned fields seen here follow the San Javier resettlement scheme, with each pinwheel containing a central community that includes a church, bar/café, school, and soccer field. The light-colored areas of the formations are primarily fields of soybeans, and the dark lines running through the fields are “windbreaks” that prevent the erosion of the area’s unusually fine soil.
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