Earth from Space: Hereford, Texas

Click on the image below to explore it in its full resolution.

Hereford, which is the county seat of Deaf Smith County in Texas, is widely known for its agriculture industry. Known as the beef capital of the world owing to its large number of cattle fed, Hereford can be spotted in the centre-bottom of the image. The area is known for its semiarid climate, with heavy farming and ranching sustained by irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer – a massive underground reservoir spanning eight landlocked states.

A variety of crops are grown in the area including corn, wheat, maize, soybeans and onions. Circular shapes in the image are an example of centre-pivot irrigation systems, where equipment rotates around a central pivot and crops are watered with sprinklers. This type of irrigation helps farmers manage their watering demands as well as help conserve their precious water sources.

This composite image over the High Plains in Texas was created by combining three separate Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission spanning from 17 March to 21 April 2019.

Shades of red, yellow and green depict changes in vegetation growth at the beginning of the season. Black patches of land indicate very low vegetation for the season, while white signifies a high level of vegetation during these dates. The Normalised Difference Vegetation Index is widely used in remote sensing as it gives scientists an accurate measure of health and status of plant growth.

The US Route 60 can be seen cutting across the bottom-right of the image. The motorway is a major east-west US route, which runs over 4200 km from southwest Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.