AfricaOn March 18, the European Space Agency released this image of Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite.
Lake Nasser, located in southern Egypt and northern Sudan, was formed by the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile in the late 1960s. This ambitious project was designed to provide irrigation water for agriculture and attract people to the area. In the photo, this lake is on the bottom right, it is black.
Part of Nasser’s man-made lake in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite image. Photo: ONE
The Aswan Dam is located about 200 km northeast of the described area. The dam stores floodwater from the Nile and releases it when needed, helping to supply water to hundreds of thousands of hectares of land downstream and surrounding areas. The dam also increases traffic through Aswan and generates a large number of hydroelectric power plants. The lake has a total surface area of 5,250 square kilometers, with an average depth of 25 m.
The ancient Egyptian temple of Abu Simbel was once in the water rising from the Aswan Dam, so it needed to be relocated. In the 1960s, the historic site was partially dismantled and reassembled in a new location to prevent flooding. In the photo, the town of Abu Simbel and its airport are near the bottom, near several plantations marked in red.
Part of Lake Toshka, a natural depression filled by the overflow from Lake Nasser, appears in the upper left corner of the image. The lake was formed in the 1980s and 1990s by diversion of water from Lake Nasser through the artificial blue channel in the image.
The water level of the lake depends on the flow of the Nile. In 2012 – 2018, the lake shrank significantly. However, Sudan’s summer rainfall in 2019 and record flooding in 2020 caused the lake to rise rapidly. The lake is relatively salty, signs of eutrophication and algae are also visible in the image.
The image released by the European Space Agency (ESA) is a color-processed composite image created using the near-infrared channel of Copernicus Sentinel-2 to highlight rare vegetation in the region. This helps identify the circular planes in the image, the largest of which is about 750 m in diameter.
Kam Thao (Based on SciTechDaily)
at Blogtuan.info – Source: vnexpress.net – Read the original article here
