 being forced to higher ground to compete with humans and other wildlife, a solution can’t come soon enough.
Landsat Played Role in Confirming 1986 Chernobyl Disaster April 25, 2016
When the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded 30 years ago, on April 26, 1986, Landsat 5 was the first civilian satellite to confirm the disaster near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the agricultural heartland of the Soviet Union.
Soviet officials initially denied the explosion in the plant’s Reactor Number 4, which destroyed part of the reactor containment building, ignited graphite in the core, and spewed radioactivity into the atmosphere for 10 days. Three days after the explosion, data from Landsat 5’s near-infrared band 7 confirmed a bright red spot within the plant complex—the exposed burning graphite of the damaged reactor shown immediately at right.
Landsat revealed more than that. Images acquired before the explosion show heated water being pumped from the plant into the adjacent cooling pond and circulating counter-clockwise. Under normal circumstances, Landsat 5’s thermal infrared band 6 would confirm that the heated water—orange in the image—gradually turns yellow and then blue as it cools. But the image from April 29 indicates all the water in the pond is the same temperature, evidence the plant was not operating.
Pressed by growing evidence from Landsat and other satellite imagery, reticent Soviet officials only slowly confirmed the facts. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev did not speak publicly about the disaster until May 14, 1986. Pripyat was abandoned, its people relocated.
At present, the natural environment in the 18-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl continues to recover. These Landsat images show the change from a previously vibrant agricultural and forestry economy in April 1986 to October 2015, when crops have been replaced by thick grasslands. Today, nearby farm fields are excluded from use by government officials—a prohibition expected to remain for a long time.
Wildfires Scorch Large Swaths Along Oklahoma-Kansas Border April 18, 2016
Grasslands made lush by summer rains in 2015 have turned into a tinderbox along the Kansas-Oklahoma border after a dry winter and gusty spring winds transformed the withering vegetation into fire fuel.
The latest in a season of wildfires is the 350 Complex Fire near Freedom, OK, just south of the Kansas border and south of the Cimarron River. On April 5, 2016, four fires sparked by downed power lines merged into one and burned almost 57,500 acres in three days. In late March, the Anderson Creek Fire—the largest blaze ever in Kansas—started in Oklahoma and spread into Kansas, burning almost 400,000 acres.
Using shortwave infrared, near infrared, and visible bands, these Landsat images provide a before and after look at the 350 Complex and Anderson Creek fires. In the March 14 image acquired by Landsat 8, a minor scar from an earlier fire appears orange in the lower left corner. The fan-shaped blue and black object at the center right edge of the image is the Great Salt Plains Lake and Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.
On April 7, Landsat 7 captured the large, brilliant red burn scars caused by the fires.
As of April 8, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID, reported that 817,480 acres had burned year-to-date across the country, the largest tally in that time frame since 2006.
In the United States, barrier beaches and spits line up along nearly a quarter of the country’s coasts, mostly facing the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Spits are like islands that connect to a mainland at one end.
These barrier systems protect their adjacent mainlands from the full fury of ocean wind and wave energy. They promote critical marsh and wetland habitats. They are living landscapes that grow, shrink, and migrate over time.
These images of the southeastern elbow of Cape Cod capture the impact of natural forces that have raised up, shifted, and torn down the Nauset-Monomoy coastal barrier system. In the June 1984 scene acquired by Landsat 5, an unbroken barrier spit protects the 