Earth from Space - Image Description

STS062-101-034 Lake Tandou, New South Wales, Australia March 1994
Located in the Darling River drainage basin, Lake Tandou (formerly a dry lake bed) is an important agricultural site in this semiarid environment of west central New South Wales. Notice that Lake Tandou has a number of discreet field patterns across the entire extent of the former dry lake bed. This lake is being used to grow a variety of crops, such as cotton, cereal grains, and sunflowers by applying pioneering, sophisticated fertigation techniques. The technique combines intensive irrigation and enhanced fertilizers and involves the drip method of irrigation. Clearly this food-production system is important in water deficient farming areas and in this situation the water used by the project is continuously recycled. The dark winding feature that traverses the bottom of the picture is the Darling River and it's densely vegetated banks. The other two large, oval-shaped lakes are Lake Cawndilla and Menindee Lake (northernmost lake). Several smaller, generally oval-shaped lakes are also visible.

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