Earth from Space - Image Description

STS078-758-044 Lake Cumberland, Kentucky, USA June 1996 Lake Cumberland (dark, irregular-shaped feature) was created by building the Wolf Creek Dam on the Cumberland River in south-central Kentucky. The color infrared film helps to discriminate the land-water boundaries, even allowing the identification of many of the tributary streams that flow into the Cumberland River. The twisting and turning stream channels of the Fishing Creek and the South Fork of the Cumberland River are visible towards the eastern end of the lake. The heavily forested, deep red areas (representing green vegetation) are visible with the greatest concentration south of Lake Cumberland. The uniform-looking, reddish color that dominates the scene is a dense forested canopy, while the lighter-colored areas (irregular pattern) indicate a landscape where the forests have been removed. U. S. Highway 27 is the light-colored, linear feature (north-south orientation) that can be traced through the rural, wooded landscape in the northeastern quadrant of the image. Even a section of the Cumberland Parkway, an east-west toll road, is visible north of Lake Cumberland.

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