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Yesterday — 14 September 2026Space

An Early Look at Fall Color in Canada

✇NASA Breaking News
14 September 2026 at 00:00
July 27
September 6
A river winds through a mostly green tundra landscape in summer, dotted with numerous lakes.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A river winds through the same tundra landscape in autumn, now colored red and orange. Some green vegetation remains visible along the river.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A river winds through a mostly green tundra landscape in summer, dotted with numerous lakes.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A river winds through the same tundra landscape in autumn, now colored red and orange. Some green vegetation remains visible along the river.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
July 27
September 6

Autumn color sweeps across the low-growing shrubs and tundra vegetation of Nunavut, Canada, in this image pair captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9. NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison.

As North America rode out a summer of remarkable heat, fall foliage and cool, crisp weather still seemed like distant, alien concepts across much of the continent in early September 2026. But fall comes early in the tundra and subarctic ecosystems of Nunavut, in far northern Canada.

Vivid signs of the season were already sweeping across the landscape on September 6 when the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured this image (right) of the Coppermine River winding through low-growing shrubs and tundra vegetation upriver of Kugluktuk, a community at the river’s mouth. The other image (left) shows the same area on July 27, 2026, when vegetation was still green.

The region is known for willow and birch shrubs, blueberries, bearberries, and other low-growing tundra plants that turn shades of red, orange, and yellow each fall. A NASA and South Dakota State University analysis of seven years of satellite data found that foliage in the region begins to change in early September and peaks in mid-month, making this one of the first places on the North American continent to change color. But blink and you might miss it: the analysis also showed that far northerly regions tend to have shorter periods of peak color—sometimes a week or less—compared to many lower-latitude areas.

In the fall, leaves change colors as they lose chlorophyll, the molecule that plants use to synthesize food. Chlorophyll makes plants appear green because it absorbs the red and blue light from sunlight as it strikes leaf surfaces. However, chlorophyll is not a stable compound, and plants must continuously synthesize it, a process that requires ample sunlight and warm temperatures. As temperatures drop and days shorten in autumn, levels of chlorophyll fall as well.

As concentrations of chlorophyll decline, the green fades from leaves, presenting an opportunity for other pigments—carotenoids and anthocyanins—to take the stage. Carotenoids absorb blue-green and blue light, so in the absence of chlorophyll, they cause leaves to appear yellow. Anthocyanins absorb blue, blue-green, and green light, so light reflecting off the pigments appears red.

Citizen scientists have an opportunity to help NASA scientists track fall color and contribute to long-term environmental databases with the GLOBE North American Phenology Campaign. Participants observe and record leaf color changes during the spring and fall, helping scientists understand plant responses to climate and environmental changes.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

A river winds through a mostly green tundra landscape in summer, dotted with numerous lakes.

July 27, 2026

JPEG (35.42 MB)

A river winds through the same tundra landscape in autumn, now colored red and orange. Some green vegetation remains visible along the river.

September 6, 2026

JPEG (33.94 MB)

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Before yesterdaySpace

The Forested Floodplains of Congaree National Park

✇NASA Breaking News
28 August 2026 at 00:01
A brown, meandering river cuts through a band of dark green forest in Congaree National Park. Labels point out an oxbow lake and meander in the river. Former river channels called paleochannels appear lighter green than other forested areas.
The OLI on Landsat 9 captured this image of the Congaree River winding through floodplain forests in Congaree National Park on August 18, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

Among the 63 U.S. national parks, few are as defined by a single river’s floodplain as Congaree National Park in South Carolina. While the features are also prominent in other parks, a full 80 percent of Congaree National Park lies within the Congaree River floodplain.

It’s a place home to one of the largest intact tracts of old-growth bottomland hardwood forests in the United States. In this image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, the river winds through the forested plain, along with curving bands of green that trace old channels, ridges, and swales left behind as the river gradually migrated across it. Slight differences in elevation in these paleochannels and other landforms affect how frequently they flood, producing distinct ecosystems that appear in contrasting shades of green.

The river flows through flat, soft terrain, which encourages the formation of bends and meanders. Water typically flows faster on the outside of bends, leading to more rapid erosion as the channel carves into the outer riverbank. It moves more slowly on the inside of bends, resulting in the deposition of sediment and the growth of sandy features called point bars. Over time, this process can cut off a bend from the main river channel, forming U-shaped oxbow lakes.

The National Park Service lists Weston Lake, 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) from the visitor center, as one of the park’s most permanent oxbow lakes, noting that it is relatively deep and lacks the shallow clay and silt layer found in most of the park’s other oxbow lakes, such as Devil’s Elbow. On the right side of the image is Bates Old River, a roughly 4-mile-long abandoned channel of the Congaree River and one of the longest oxbow lakes in South Carolina. Over time, abandoned channels and oxbow lakes can fill with sediment and become shallow wetlands. Some of these low-lying, water-filled features are known as sloughs, where flood-tolerant cypress-tupelo forests tend to grow.

While loggers targeted forests along the Congaree in the 1880s, challenges such as frequent flooding, interminably muddy roads, and mosquito-plagued conditions meant that most of the floodplain forests escaped the widespread logging that transformed other parts of the Southeast. By the 1950s, conservationists had begun to recognize how rare old-growth forests of this type had become in the region. Congress designated the area a national monument in 1976, and it became a national park in 2003.

As the river snakes its way through the park’s mostly flat terrain, it overflows its banks several times per year, usually in the winter and early spring but also in the summer and fall after hurricanes and major rainstorms. These floods distribute broad layers of nutrient-rich silt throughout the floodplain, nourishing the forests and contributing to the high concentration of unusually large trees in the park.

Over the decades, Congaree National Park has harbored a remarkable array of giant “champion” trees that have held national and state size records for their species. Though individual trees have gained and lost champion status as they have been damaged, have died, or been surpassed by newly measured trees elsewhere, Congaree trees such as the possumhaw (Ilex decidua), water hickory (Carya aquatica), loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia), swamp tupelo (Nyssa biflora), and sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) have held records at times.

During this National Park Week, celebrate by exploring Earth Observatory’s U.S. National Parks from Space collection. You can also check out the offerings of Earth to Sky, a collaborative program that connects NASA science with park service rangers across the nation.   

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

A brown, meandering river cuts through a band of dark green forest in Congaree National Park. Labels point out an oxbow lake and meander in the river. Former river channels called paleochannels appear lighter green than other forested areas.

August 18, 2025

JPEG (13.48 MB)

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