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Where is it?Tanezrouft Basin , the Sahara . [ 26.2089113 , 2.27090884 ] .
What ’s in the photo?Exposed paleozoic rock’n’roll folds and colorful salt pans .
A roughly 100-mile-wide (160 kilometers) section of the Tanezrouft Basin in Algeria. The concentric rings are exposed folds of sandstone rock and the green splodges are salt flats.
Which satellite took the photo?Landsat 8 .
When was it taken?Oct . 22 , 2017 .
This 2017 satellite photo shows the abstract beauty of one of the world ’s most terrifyingly hostile environments .
A Tuareg nomad standing next to an exposed sandstone fold in Algeria’s Tassili N’Ajjer National Park to the north of the Tanezrouft Basin.
The Tanezrouft Basin is a big region of theSaharamainly located in southern Algeria and northerly Mali . The country receive less than 0.2 inches ( 5 millimeters ) of rainwater a yr on medium , making it " hyperarid . " Temperatures can reach over 122 academic degree Fahrenheit ( 50 arcdegree Celsius ) during summertime , according toNASA ’s Earth Observatory .
The basin is almost altogether devoid of life asunder from some Tuareg nomad who at times make the treacherous journeying through the region on a caravan route that dates back more than 1,500 old age . But this can be a deadly trip-up due to the region ’s lack of seeable landmarks , which can cause even the most experient travelers to get miss . As a answer , the basin is colloquially eff as the " Land of Terror . "
Thousands of years of sandstorms have erode sediment and sand from parts of the river basin , which has revealed ancient homocentric folds in the region ’s undulating sandstone bedrock that date to thePaleozoic era(541 million to 252 million years ago ) . flash bulb of park are pitted around these folded rock , which are Strategic Arms Limitation Talks flats often turn up in steep canyons .
When view from outer space , " the expose geologic characteristic create an arresting work of abstract art,“NASArepresentatives write .
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The dramatic landscape also reveal that Tanezrouft Basin has n’t always been so unfriendly to life .
Some of the salt flats in this genuine - color image lay in canyons up to 1,600 feet ( 490 meters ) deep . The scale of these outrageous gullies and the figure of their smoothed sides are sign that they were carve out by flowing urine , potentially from intermittent implosion therapy over trillion of years , P. Kyle House , a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey , told NASA ’s Earth Observatory .
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This suggest the region could have once been a more luscious environment potentially capable of supporting a various ecosystem .
Today , the salt flats and their canyons either lie within or intersect with the exposed sandstone folding , creating the shapes see in this image . " These pattern are striking and redolent of landscape constitute on folded strata in , for example , the Red Desert of southern Wyoming and even role of the heavy forested Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States , " House said .
