Mystery Picture: Near the Terkezi Oasis in the Sahara
Earth's largest band of dry land--the Sahara--blankets the top
third of the African continent. Orange-tan plains of sand and gravel,
white seas of drifting sand, and black barren mountains...
Only two percent of Sahara's desert hosts oases where date
palms and fig trees sway, crops grow, and people live--almost two million of
them.
This picture shows rocky outcroppings in land spanning about
30 miles (50 km) near the Terkezi Oasis in Chad.
The Sahara shrinks and grows. In the early 1980s, the
Sahara crept south into the Sahel, a dry band separating desert from savannah.
But by the mid 1980s that land was green and wet again.
Image Credit: Landsat 7
satellite, NASA, USGS
Past mystery pictures:
 F/A-18
Hornet breaks the sound barrier
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