Along the western coast of Southern Thailand, a series of bright tan beaches lines the Andaman Sea. These sandy expanses fill the gaps between the myriad other features touching the sea, from limestone karst towers to mangroves to built-up areas. The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 captured these images on March 23, 2026,…
In a remote part of northern Mauritania on the Adrar Plateau lies a desert landscape rich in human history. This region of northwestern Africa is sprinkled with Paleolithic stone tools, Neolithic cave paintings, and the remains of medieval towns once used by caravans crossing the Sahara Desert. When viewed from space, the landscape appears to…
Early spring around Hudson Bay in northern Canada is largely indistinguishable from winter. Sea ice still clings to land, and the boggy lowlands remain frozen. In the dulled tones of the boreal landscape, however, snow helps accentuate the area’s subtle topography. In late March 2026, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured this photo…
On the eastern, arid side of the Andes, the plains of southern Argentina stretch from the mountains to the Atlantic coast. The landscape often appears dry and brown, interrupted by colorful glacier-fed lakes, but a storm in early April 2026 blanketed swaths of the land in white. The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this…
Take a tour through volcanic history on the edge of the Sierra Nevada near Mammoth Lakes, California. Between the tall granite peaks to the west and the Basin and Range province to the east, overlapping volcanic complexes imprint the landscape with a collection of craters, cones, and calderas. The area, still restless today, draws interest…
Today’s story is the answer to the March 2026 puzzler. Though Ireland is known for the many shades of green that grace its grassy pastoral landscapes, there’s one corner of the Emerald Isle where gray reigns supreme. In the Burren region, on the island’s west coast, what geologists describe as limestone pavement covers much of…
