Image of the Day September 26, 2018

Source: Digital Globe

Image of the Day September 26, 2018

This image obtained from WorldView-2 displays a newly created island as a result of a volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan in 2016. You can see the smoke from the volcano and small patch of life(green circle) on the island. This image is of immense importance because scientists can study how islands form.  Furthermore, scientists can remotely study how life can be created on islands without physically interfering with the process. 

Image of the day, September 20th

Korean Peninsula at night

You can see urbanization in South Korea with a major center in northern part being Seoul. There is the brightly lit DMZ (demilitarized zone) line dividing the two countries. In North Korea, there are only some lights here and there. A little towards what seems to be the capital city of Pyongyang, but nothing close to the South. It also shows the development that South Korea has undergone. What's really fascinating about this image is that you can practically see the entire outline map of South Korea and it is easy to mistake it for an island because of the darkness around it. This image can help us understand rates of development and urbanization as well as patterns of urbanization in the Korean peninsula.  

Mass in Managua, September 18, 2018

This image shows a large body of people attending mass at a cathedral, a cathedral which has been central to the student-led protests against changes to social security and against general corruption in Nicaragua. This photo highlights the community involvement in the protests, as masses in Nicaragua are generally not well attended, but here there are hundreds of people who don't even fit in the church.


Here's a good summary of the history of the protests in Nicaragua:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/world/americas/nicaragua-church-protest.html

Timelapse of Coral Bleaching in Australia

This picture shows the effects of climate change on a Staghorn Coral reef bed over the time span of less than a year. This picture is from the production of Chasing Coral and was taken off the East coast of Australia. The side-to-side comparison of before and after, as well as the ability to capture the atmosphere to land barrier, is what makes this picture so meaningful to me. This topic is important, because things under water, for the most part, are out of sight for society and we don't realize what it happening. This picture can also come across as despiteful because the bleached side shows miles of these elegant pure white structures, and many people do know how to interpret that. The fact is that they aren't dead yet, the coral has just lost its symbolic relationship with the photosynthetic organisms that reside with the coral and will be on the path to death without the nutrients from this relationship. 

http://news.janegoodall.org/2017/09/06/exclusive-chasing-coral-interview-with-filmmaker-jeff-orlowski/