Satellite Explorer Quest

Satellite Explorer Quest
My first Earth Science using Sentenel-2.
My first port of call was home base. Obvious were urban features , mountains, areas with vegetation and the large body of water, which is called False Bay.
Next in line I visited the Kogel Bay Nature Reserve which is part of the Cape Floral Kingdom. Satellites are used to monitor the invasion of alien vegetation.
I meandered up the west coast of Africa to Walvis Bay (Namibia) where ocean meets the Namib desert. Typical of this region is the fog and low clouds that roll in due to the cold Benguela current and s/westerly winds. The tiny square patches in my image looked a bit large for normal urban buildings. I established that these were Saltworks. The ponds are artificially flooded and being rich in nutrients attract wetland birds such as flamingos.

The Okavango Delta. Botswana. Africa

Inspired by Slooh‘s Parts of a River Quest, I became curious about inland deltas. I set up several satellite missions to get images of the great expanse of the Okavango Delta.

The Okavango River does not flow into the sea but spreads fanlike into the Kalahari Basin which is a very large lowland area (endorheic basin) These are called closed basins as they collect water but have no water flowing away from them.

This Delta is formed by seasonal flooding from March to June.

I have also learned that the Okavango Delta has important carbon sinks (pools) which take up more carbon from the atmosphere than is released.

Climate change is having a detrimental effect on the delta.

Slooh’s space exploration and Earth Sciences platform features an interface to satellites and online telescopes