Earth from Space - Image Description

STS033-92-72 Mayu and Naf River Valleys, Myanmar/Bangladesh November 1989
This color-infrared near-vertical view shows the mouth of the Naf River (left edge) and the upper Mayu River valley (center). The western linear folds of the Arakan Range separate the two river valleys. The water on the far left center and upper left of the image is the Bay of Bengal. The Naf River Valley is mostly an estuary of marsh and swamplands inter-dispersed with agricultural lands. The river course follows the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. The Mayu River has a larger catchment area, and here we see its upstream section; it continues to drain southward (bottom center) before its mouth widens into the Bay of Bengal just north of the city of Sittwe (not seen in this photograph). Forests cover most of the high slopes of the mountains with grasslands mixed with agriculture covering the lower slopes. Despite the dense forest cover of the hills and mountains, anticlinal and synclinal structural patterns are shown clearly. The Arakan Range is part of a long chain of ranges that form at the margin of the Indian plate and the Asian plate.

This service is provided by the International Space Station program and the JSC Earth Science & Remote Sensing Unit, ARES Division, Exploration Integration Science Directorate.