Akimiski Island, Canada

Scraped clean and weighted down for thousands of years by Pleistocene ice sheets, Akimiski Island in James Bay provides a case study of how Earth's land surfaces evolve following glaciation. During the last ice age, this small island was buried under several thousand meters ice, but since its retreat, the island has rebounded (risen in elevation) and new beach areas have emerged, streams and lakes have formed, and trees and other vegetation have colonized the new territory.

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NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided by the University of Maryland’s Global Land Cover Facility. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

Published April 15, 2008
Data acquired August 9, 2000

Sources:

Landsat 7

Landsat 7 > ETM+

Collection:

ABCs from Space