Feature: Geographia

From the petroglyphs of ancient societies to the stunning views of our planet from space, humans have endeavored to visualize and accurately map our world. As early geographers recorded the experiences from travelers and merchants, they created lists of places and geographic features. To spatially represent these data, geographers mapped the distances between features from the perspective of the traveler. Maps have aided navigation, settled disputes, and illustrated the extent of an Empire’s power. Beyond these and other utilitarian uses for maps, the desire to discover what was beyond the edges of the map–to venture into the unknown–brought about an Age of Exploration that continues into the 21st century with space exploration. [more]

 
This is an illustration of the Landsat 7 satellite acquiring imagery of the Earth from space. The artist rendering of Landsat 7 is above an image of Earth and is scanning a swath.

A Final Farewell to Landsat 7

The Landsat 7 satellite launched in April 1999 and will be decommissioned after 26 years in orbit. Its science mission, focused on collecting imagery data of Earth’s land and inland waters, spanned 25 years.

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Landsat image of a Klamath reservoir after dam removal. A skinny dark band shows a river surrounded by silty formerly-submerged lands.

Undamming the Klamath

Between October 2023 and October 2024, the four dams of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project were taken down, opening more than 400 miles of salmon habitat.

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