New MODIS picture of Aral Sea, Some good news, but mostly very Bad!

[Up2Late]

The Thumbnail below takes you to the best NEW MODIS image I've seen of the Aral Sea in months. That and the fact that it looks like some new water is actually reaching both the the Southern and Northern sections of what used to be the 4th largest inland lake.

Since about 1960 the Aral Sea has lost about 70-80% of it's former volume.

The bad news is, it looks like the Aral sea has shrunk even further since April, and the small cove in the Northern part of the Southern Aral Sea is almost completely separated now. Also, several of the new islands, have visibly grow since April. The RAW images are viewable in 4km, 2km, 1km, 500m, 250m Resolutions



Below is a Thumbnail to several older NASA MODIS images from the Processed image gallery.



If you have a slow connection, the FSI Viewer is available by clicking on the Icon that looks like this:

For comparison, you can check out almost any World atlas or this USGS site which has a map from 1973:
<http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/earthshots/slow/Aral/Aral>

Here are a few more links to some BBC News stories that explain why we should care:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/678898.stm>

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3846843.stm>

[EVDebs]

1. Do they have anything that shows US deforestation/clearcutting

especially in the Pacific Northwest, WA,OR,CA ?

[Up2Late]

2. Sure, but most of the images are from 2001 or later...

...so you might need to find a USGS photo, if you want to compare it to earlier than that.

MODIS produces "Medium Resolution" images which are mainly used to look at the effects of fires and environmental changes. If you want to see closer that 250m resolution, "Google Earth" might work for you, but Google Earth uses a Patchwork of images, so it's hard to tell when those photo were taken.

Also, the N.W. is one of those places that is covered with clouds a good bit of the time, so it might not have as many images as a desert area.

The link below I got by entering Columbia (as in British Columbia), but you can enter almost anything and see what you get:

<http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?search=Columbia>

I've looked at the South American Rain Forests before by entering the word Brazil or Northern Brazil. Amazon doesn't fetch much.