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SearchDaily Overview
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.
Phoenix
33.300000°,-111.833333° - NASA
Phoenix, Arizona is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States, gaining over 3 million residents between 1980 and 2020. Laid out along a regular grid of blocks and avenues, it was designed to sprawl outward, and it has doubled in size in 40 years. The Phoenix metro area spans 14,600 square miles (37,800 square kilometers), an area 1.25 times the size of Belgium. This Overview features the southeastern part of the city, including the communities of Gilbert, Mesa and Chandler.
Westmont Rooftop Solar Project
33.765342°,-118.286512° - Nearmap
The Westmont Rooftop Solar Project in San Pedro, California, comprises 2 million square feet of solar panels on the roof of a distribution center. The panels have a bifacial design, meaning they collect reflected light from the surface of the roof in addition to direct sunlight. This enables the panels to generate up to 45% more power than traditional rooftop solar panels and power 5,000 nearby homes.
Permian Basin
32.140680°,-103.538580° - NASA
Oil pump jacks checker the landscape of southeastern New Mexico and western Texas, a region known as the Permian Basin. This area contains one of the world’s thickest deposits of rock from the Permian geologic period and consequently is the largest petroleum-producing area in the United States. Increased drilling and pumping in recent decades has meant increased production—the Permian Basin accounted for roughly 43% of U.S. oil in 2022, up from 18% in 2013.
Ansan
37.375000°,126.685000° - Planet
Ansan has quickly become one of South Korea’s busiest industrial cities, fueled by its emphasis on manufacturing. Though it has only been a city since 1986, it now has more than 700,000 residents and upwards of 10,000 companies. Visit our Instagram @dailyoverview to watch a Timelapse showing Ansan’s expansion onto reclaimed land in the Yellow Sea and the construction of Sihwa Seawall, which contains the world's largest tidal power generator. In recent years, water inside the seawall has begun drying up and will likely decline with additional land reclamation.
Durrat Al Bahrain
25.840000°,50.600000° - Planet
Durrat Al-Bahrain is a collection of 15 artificial islands, built in the Persian Gulf off the southern coast of Bahrain. Construction of the 5-square-kilometer (2-square-mile) site began in 2004 and has cost more than $6 billion to date. Some of the islands still remain uninhabited.
Black Thunder Coal Mine
43.645061°,-105.282673° - Planet
The Black Thunder Coal Mine in Gillette, Wyoming, USA, opened in 1977 and has grown to become one of the largest coal mines in the world. Massive dragline excavators — the largest of which holds 160 cubic yards (120 cubic meters) in a single bucket — strip away the earth’s surface to extract coal deposits below. Now covering roughly 200 square miles (518 square kilometers), Black Thunder provides the US with 8% of its coal supply.
Las Vegas, Nevada
36.175000°,-115.136389° - Planet
Las Vegas has experienced more than 4x population growth over the last thirty years — from 700,000 to upwards of 3 million people today. This drastic increase has contributed to Nevada becoming one of the fastest-growing states in America and can be observed here as the city's streets and buildings sprawl into the surrounding desert.
San Diego-Tijuana
32.538862°,-117.058973° - Planet
San Diego-Tijuana has grown in recent decades to become the largest trans-border metropolitan area between the United States and Mexico. The population of the region, about 3 million in the mid-1980s, is now more than 5.3 million. Ports of entry have also expanded, allowing more than 50 million people to cross the border every year — the busiest land-border crossing in the world.
Lake Powell
36.936111°,-111.484167° - Planet
Water levels at Lake Powell reservoir have ebbed and flowed in the last few decades, but have declined overall. Located on the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona, it is the second largest artificial reservoir in the United States, able to hold 55 times as much water as Sydney Harbor in Australia. In April 2022, Lake Powell’s water level was at 3,522.24 feet (1,073.58 m) in elevation — just 22.88% of capacity and the lowest level since it was filled in 1963. Visit our Instagram @dailyoverview to watch a Timelapse video of the lake over the years.
Tagebau Hambach Mine
50.907783°,6.523415° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Tagebau Hambach is a surface coal mine in North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany. The mine opened in 1978 and currently covers 44 square kilometers (17 square miles). Here, bucket-wheel excavators – considered to be the largest land machines in the world at 315 feet (96 meters) tall and 730 feet (223 meters) long – continuously scoop materials from the surface in order to extract coal and will eventually expand the facility to cover 85 square kilometers (33 square miles).
Moab Potash Evaporation Ponds
38.485583°,-109.684611° - Planet
Vibrant evaporation ponds are seen at a potash mine in Moab, Utah. The facility produces muriate of potash, a potassium‐containing salt that is a major component in fertilizers. The salt is pumped to the surface from underground brines and dried in these massive solar ponds. As the water evaporates over a span of 300 days, the salts crystallize out. The variation of color occurs because the water is dyed a deep blue (darker water absorbs more sunlight and heat, thereby reducing the amount of time it takes for the water to evaporate) and over time, the blue fades as the water evaporates. Visit our Instagram @dailyoverview to watch a Timelapse of the ponds changing color.
Brazil Deforestation
-10.030010°,-63.049470° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Deforestation in the Brazilian state of Rondônia has occurred on a devastating scale over the last 40 years. In 1978, just 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 square miles) of its rainforest had been cleared, but by 2003 more than 67,000 square kilometers (25,000 square miles) was cut down.
Doha
25.286667°,51.533333° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Doha became the capital city of Qatar in 1971, and shortly thereafter, began growing at rapid speed. The city's population exploded from 90,000 in the 1970’s to more than 2.3 million today. Doha’s cityscape has also expanded drastically, sprawling outward into the desert and the Persian Gulf atop reclaimed land.
Osaka and Kobe
34.500000°,135.300000° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Osaka and Kobe, Japan expand into Osaka Bay as land reclamation projects are completed over recent decades. Approximately 0.5% of Japan’s total area is estimated to be reclaimed land, which has been created for facilities like the 10.5 square kilometer (4 square mile) Kansai Airport that appears at left. Osaka is the 10th largest urban area in the world with more than 19 million inhabitants.
Saudi Arabia Irrigation
30.019630°,38.437350° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Saudi Arabia has worked for nearly 30 years to irrigate the Syrian Desert, where it grows wheat and other crops. To do so, it has drilled through the desert floor and drawn water from underground aquifers, which irrigates fields through center-pivot irrigation — creating the green circles seen here. This operation, in the Wadi As-Sirhan Basin, covers roughly 7,800 square kilometers (3,000 square miles) and each circular field is about one kilometer (0.62 miles) across.
Antarctic Sea Ice Timelapse
-76.865660°,-153.302680° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Antarctic sea ice has gradually diminished over the last few decades, as surrounding oceans have grown warmer and northward winds stronger. Visit our Instagram @dailyoverview to watch a Timelapse video of melting in a ~18,000 square kilometer (7,800 square mile) area near the Ross Sea. In the last decade, Antarctica lost an estimated 252 billion tons (229 billion metric tons) of ice per year.
Cancún, Mexico
21.160556°,-86.847500° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Cancún, Mexico, has grown significantly in the last few decades, quickly becoming one of the most popular tourist destinations on the Caribbean Sea. The resort city was developed on the site of a coconut plantation with three residents in the 1970s and by 2019 was able to accommodate more than 6 million tourists. Its population and urban footprint has also boomed; in the mid-1980s the Cancún metro area was home to about 70,000 people, and today it has nearly 1 million inhabitants. Visit our Instagram @dailyoverview to see a Timelapse video of Cancún growing.
Google Bay View Campus
37.421849°,-122.066877° - Nearmap
Construction of Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, California began in 2017 and the facility just opened to employees in May 2022. The all-electric structure is net water positive, powered by a dragonscale solar-skin exterior, and boasts the largest geothermal installation in North America. Located on 42-acres, Bay View can accommodate 4,000 employees.
Australia Bushfires
-29.833700°,123.928930° - NASA / Google Timelapse
Australian bushfires are a regular occurrence that have shaped the landscape of the continent over millions of years. However, because the most destructive fires are usually preceded by higher temperatures, global warming has increased — and is predicted to continue increasing — the frequency of blazes. Visit our Instagram @dailyoverview to see a Timelapse of ~3200 square miles of Western Australian with scorched areas gradually growing over the last few decades.
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