Europe, the Mediterranean, and North Africa have been the cultural center of Western Civilization since the eras of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, the Romans, and various empires and lands up to and after the Renaissance. Iceland is considered to be within the sphere of Europe, so we begin there. For most traveling from the U.S. to European centers of our Western roots and culture, a full tour begins in Ireland and ends to the east at Moscow. The majority of the continent is moderately vegetated - much land has been cultivated now but forests remain.
(Note: Some of the images below were provided by ESA's Eduspace. Additional images can be found at their Eduspace links site.
It may come as a surprise to learn that many geographers consider Iceland to be a part of an extended Europe. It was settled by Europeans centuries ago and still has Danish roots. But, geolgoically, Iceland lies at the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. It sits atop one of the few places where the Atlantic Ridge, a divergent spreading zone of volcanic origin, extends over a wide area above the sea surface. Take a look at this MODIS image of the island which, in midwinter, has a greater snow cover that in the summer months (but some of the white is a permanent icecap, shown again on page 17-5).
In a sense, this next image also belongs to Europe. The Canary Islands are a part of Spain but lie in the Atlantic off the coast of Morocco. The island of Tenerife is built as a volcano (called Teide) rising as an offshoot of the Atlantic Ridge. It is seen here as a SIR-C image:
Most of us are familiar with the shape of Europe and its surrounding regions from our geography lessons since our grade school days. Now here is what that continent (continuous with, but arbitrarily separated from, Asia) as seen from space (greens imply significant vegetation; browns could either mean less vegetation, as in Russia, or, in Africa, desertlike conditions):
As we cross the Atlantic Ocean, the first land we might see if enroute to, say, London is the British Isles. Here is a satellite view, looking east (top), of these great islands (Britain-Scotland-Wales and Ireland), with the continental coastline from about Normandy to southern Norway:
Ireland, the "Emerald Isle" so dear to every Irishman, has been colored green in this next scene by projecting the TM Band 4 image through a green filter. The upper eastern part of the island is Northern Ireland, at the end of the Belfast Lough (actually, a marine bay). The large inland lake to the west is Lough Neagh. In this June image, late spring, the Irish countryside is truly a rich green almost everywhere. The Republic of Ireland occupies the larger part of the land. Its capital, Dublin, is here covered with clouds, on the coast just below center right. The large island in the Irish Sea is the Isle of Man. The jutting land peninsula in center top is the tip of the Scottish mainland, at the Mull of Galloway. The above image is much like one produced from SRTM radar data used to determine elevation. Low areas (central valleys) appear in green; higher, more hilly to mountainous terrain are in shades of brown:
A bit of the charm of Ireland appears in this photo (taken by the writer) of Clifden, a resort town on the west coast in County Galway:
Dublin on the Irish east coast is quite familiar to American Irish who journey back to the land of their forekin. The writer's (NMS) fondest memory of this town is the Guinness Brewery whose tour ends in a tasting session. Here is Dublin as seen by SIR-C radar (Section 8):
And here it is "up close and personal", looking down O'Connell Street, the city's main thoroughfare:
Ireland has always been a favorite destination for Americans, many of Irish ancestry and others who seek its enchantment as tourists. The writer (not Irish), his wife (all Irish), and son (obviously half-Irish) went around the island in September of 2000. A must-see is the rugged west coast of the Republic of Ireland. A favorite of most visitors is the Ring of Kerry, which follows the coastline around the Iveragh Peninsula, in County Kerry. We accessed the Ring through the charming town of Killarney. This SIR-C radar image shows the entire Peninsula, with a hint of the hilly terrain that marks its interior:
One of the great cities of the world is London, shown here in this scene that covers part of southeast England. The Thames Estuary is conspicuous. The countryside, in this March 1973 image, has just begun to "green up" as field crops and grasslands resume growth. Besides greater London (blue, near center), other well known smaller cities, among them Oxford and Reading, are hard to discern. The dark, vegetation-poor area in the upper right is East Anglia, whose rocky soils inhibit extensive farming. Through London itself passes the Prime Meridian (0°) for the global latitude-longitude coordinate system.
This ASTER image zeroes in on Greater London and surrounding countryside. The Parliament area shown two images down is near the center. The green areas to the west are St. James Park and Hyde Park.
This annotated astronaut photo taken from the International Space Station shows many of the famed landmarks within the central city.
Americans feel a special kinship with England, amplified by our revolt against our "Motherland", its monarchy system, and unrepresented TAXES. But England's Kings and Queens remain through today. Here is the London home of royalty, Buckingham Palace, as seen by an OrbImage satellite:
London's fame and its tie to Americans' heritage will prompt us to spend a bit more time in looking at some of its landmarks. Greater London's area is among the largest in Europe. The image most of us conjure up when asked to visualize London will include the Parliament Building and Big Ben.
The Quickbird satellite has taken high resolution images of the Parliament buildings, the nearby bridge across the Thames, and the Jubilee Park rededicated in 2000 (Millenium Park) with its huge Ferris Wheel (400 ft high) known as the London Eye.
An enlargement, taken at another time, shows both the Parliament buildings and the great Wheel in a different orientation than above. Much of the same area seen in these two space images is identified in this map: See if you can find the following in the images: Parliament buildings and Westminster Abbey; St. James Park; Waterloo Station; Charing Cross Station; Her Majesty's Treasury; St. Thomas Hospital. We show below a photo of perhaps the visual symbol of London, Big Ben and the Parliament buildings: The north side of the Thames that includes the areas shown in the space imagery takes on a somewhat different perspective when seen as color aerial oblique photos as shown here: But, beyond the Thames and the government buildings, present day London is acquiring a modern look, with tall buildings (but few skyscrapers), thus: Two of the largest cities in England are Manchester and Liverpool, seen here in big versions (hopefully, to allow labeling to be read) of Google Earth images:
It was at Manchester, for the First International Geomorphology Conference in 1987, that the writer (NMS) was on stage at the opening ceremonies, sitting next to the Duke of Devonshire. No such royalty at Liverpool (on the estuary of the Mersey River; remember "Mersey Doats") but this was the port from which NMS's wife's mother left Ireland for the United States.
That conference was preceded by a field trip to the Scottish Highlands of western Scotland. In the history of modern Geology, this is a famous region where many of the 19th Century concepts about metamorphism were developed. The Highlands are divided by the Great Glen Fault, a strike-slip fault around which the west block moved about 100 km southward. The fault localizes valleys and lakes, the most famed of which is Loch Ness (guess who lives in it?) at the north end. Here is a Landsat subscene showing the fault and the Highlands (Grampian Mts. at bottom center and Northern Highland in upper left):
In the western Highlands is the large Ardnamurchan Peninula, where the concept of a "ring dike complex" was first developed. Here is the area from space:
The biggest city in Scotland, the upper half of the British Isles, is Edinburgh (pronounced "Ed-in-buro"). This is an ERS-SAR view, somewhat enlarged. Note the blackish oval feature in from the right center. That is the famed "Arthur's Seat", which was a key aid to the Scot James Hutton who is credited as the one who laid the foundation of modern Geology. That hill, with its volcanic rocks, was just outside the writer's door in the Edinburgh University's guest villa as he took part in the field trip through Scotland prior to the above meeting of geomorphologists.
Less colorful but also informative is this Landsat image of Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth:
The old city of Edinburgh has a low skyline. Its wide streets help to make it an especially attractive city. Here is a view:
Across the North Sea from England and Scotland lies the northwestern part of the Netherlands, or Holland. The scene below reveals one of the great engineering feats by any nation. Much of the land was once under water or has been created by backfill. The great inland bodies of water were known as the Zuider Zee after they enlarged following breaches in the 13th century of the line of present day barrier islands known as the West Frisian Islands. In 1932 a 25 km (16 mile) barrier dam was completed to divide this water into the Wadden Zee (north) and Ijssell Meer (south). The change in flow facilitated drainage that reclaimed landmasses such as Flevoland, known as polders; these show up a bluish-gray areas. Some of the many Dutch canals are visible. Amsterdam, Holland’s largest city (in blue tones, near bottom center), lies along a major canal to the sea at the bottom of the silty Meer.
Here is a closer look at Amsterdam, as seen by the ERS SAR radar; note the black thin rectangles.
Amsterdam is a city of canals, some appearing in this Landsat image that shows the urban area along a large ocean-connected canal midst farming fields. This image reveals the identity of the aforementioned black rectangles - they are runways at the International Airport (look in the lower left quadrant).
The capital of Belgium (and Headquarters of NATO) is Brussels, seen in this Landsat image:
The queen city of Europe - in terms of beauty - is Paris, France. We have already taken a thorough visual tour of Paris on page 4-4, which you can check out as a refresher.
Heading next into Scandinavia, the island of Zealand (Sjaelland) in Denmark dominates the next image. Copenhagen, that country’s capital, is the dark blackish area at it upper right (east) end. A narrow strait, the Ore Sund, separates this part of Denmark from southern Sweden; Malmo, one of that country’s larger cities, appears as another black spot. Farming dominates the land use in these sections of both nations, principal crops being wheat, potatoes, and animal fodder. In Sweden, the reddish area is a forested region known as the Smaland Plateau.
Up close and personal, Copenhagen looks like this:
While we are presently in Scandinavia, lets look at three more capital cities. First is Oslo, Norway, seen here as a small blue patch at the end of a Baltic Sea inlet in this Landsat-2 subscene:
This is Oslo, as approached from the Baltic Sea; the city has a distinct atmosphere of being a large, friendly "town".
This ESA's ERS-SAR close-up of Oslo gives a better sense of the low hilly topography around the city (white):
Oslo is a relatively small city (population about 750000) nestled in low mountains (the high mountains of Norway, with their fjords, are to the west). This view of the town was taken looking west from the Eckeberg Restaurant where I had lunch in 1960 with the famed Russian geologist V.V. Beluossov.
The west coast of Norway is famed for its rugged scenery and jagged coastline. Much of this is due to Pleistocene sculpturing of stream valleys coming off mountains by glaciers. The glaciers deepened the valleys, which flooded as sea level rose in the last 10000 years. The submerged valleys, with steep-walled sides, produce the fjords, some of which can be 100s of meters deep. This image of Norway's coastline was made by the MISR sensor on Terra:
Let's go east for a look at the inner city harbor of Stockholm, Sweden as seen by IKONOS, and then the equivalent area from an aerial oblique photo.
The third capital - Helsinki, Finland - lies along the Baltic coast:
Germany has been a pivotal European nation (although that status only happened in the 19th century) for much of modern history. The industrial heartland of Germany, so vital to Deutschland in World War II, dominates this next image. The famed Rhine River runs through the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Numerous blotches of dark bluish-black mark the locations of many large cities (use an Atlas to pin these down). Along the Rhine are Bonn, Cologne, and Dusseldorf. The smaller Ruhr River, coming from the East, makes up the Ruhr Valley, with such cities as Mulheim, Essen, Bochum, and Dortmund whose steel and industrial works were the targets of many bombing raids by the Allies during World War 2. Much of the countryside is part of the North German Plains, where farming is the principal activity. The forested Central Uplands to the east blends into the Rothaar Gebirge. Small parts of Belgium and Holland lie along the left edge of the image.
Upstream - to the south - on the Rhine are important cities such as Bonn, Frankfurt, and Wiesbaden. Another is Cologne (Köln), a very old city - it was founded by Emperor Claudius' wife Agrippa in the 3rd century - that has been an important center for shipping and industry in modern Germany. Here is a SPOT-1 pan cam 10 meter resolution image of Cologne (yes, the perfume originated there), and an aerial view beneath it.
Dominating Cologne is its great Gothic cathedral (Dom), started in 1248 A.D., that is the largest in Germany. Here is an IKONOS view that includes the cathedral:
This cathedral was the locus of a moving moment in the writer's (NMS) life. Cologne was the first German city I visited during my grand tour of Europe in 1960. I arrived on an early Sunday afternoon. I was surprised, when I entered the church, to find that a very special ceremony was just then taking place. Churchmen traipsed through the cathedral aisles carrying almost 150 relics and statuary to celebrate a church feast. Then, a full symphony orchestra and chorus performed Anton Bruckner's Te Deum, followed by a High Mass. I was overcome by the pageantry and solemnity.
I ventured into a local ratzkeller restaurant afterwards. I was the only tourist there. I practiced my German in ordering the meal. A young man came over to help - if I practiced my English with him. Soon, the whole restaurant was involved. When I left (to go on a barge for a trip up the Rhine), the patrons applauded us. They also told me that Cologne was destroyed by Allied bombers in World War II, but U.S. airmen took special pains to avoid hitting the cathedral. This picture shows the devastation:
Even more destruction leveled the city of Dresden, on the Elbe River. One terrible night saw massive firebombing that incinerated most of the city. But, like most such calamities in the cities of Germany, Dresden has been almost completely rebuilt (both with modern new buildings and with reconstruction of ancient and medieval landmarks). Here is an Envisat image of Dresden and other cities on the Elbe River; below is a Radarsat image of today's Dresden; then an IKONOS image of central Dresden:
Both the Dresden scene and that of Berlin, to be looked at next, point to something the writer considers to be a land cover signature of Germany, and to a lesser degree, several other European countries. Look again at the Envisat image and note the many irregular polygons that have a medium-dark brownish color. Early in my experience with Landsat I noted the same distinctive signature and attributed it then to large stands of natural forest land. This false color subscene shows such a feature in more detail:
Here the polygons appear to be a mix of deciduous trees, possible small lakes, and whatever else is contributing to the "blackness". This last may be dark evergreens, but the interpretation is inconclusive. It seems surprising that so much of the land would still be forested inasmuch as the Central European countries have large populations. But many decades ago, the Germans undertook a massive reforestation program to counter the downcutting of most of the medieval forests that served to provide firewood. I'm guessing, but think I'm right; on my first day in Germany in 1960 I took a lengthy walk through such a woodlands (whose pathways were frequented by cyclists and native pedestrians).
So, we would like to add Berlin to our display of European capitals. An Envisat image does include this famous city, as a pink patch in the lower right, in a wide field image that covers much of northern Germany, eastern Denmark, and southern Sweden.
An ERS SAR image affords a closer look:
This natural color ASTER image establishes the setting of Berlin within its countryside.
Another ASTER image shows the heart of Berlin:
A still closer view (IKONOS) shows the famed government area that includes the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate:
Having looked at western and northern Europe, we now make a big leap to the southwestern part of the continent, specifically for a tour of the Ibernian Peninsula, shown here first in an ERS-1 image and a corresponding map of Spain.
The Ibernian Peninsula joins the rest of Europe in southwestern France. The peninsular landmass crashed into the European block as part of a plate tectonics collision starting about 150 million years ago. The result was a mini-version of the crumpling of sedimentary rocks into the folded mountains of the Pyrenees, the central part of which appears in this ASTER image:
The ERS-1 image above indicates that parts of the peninsula are semi-arid (light buff) whereas other parts are covered with more green vegetation, particularly those regions with higher elevations. Much of northern Spain is dry with rainfall commonly less than 30 cm (12 inches). In the next image, the wide Ebro Basin, drained by the Ebro River, forms arid lowlands in which most of the agriculture (cereals; sugar beets) is concentrated along that river, tributaries, and irrigation ditches. Away from these farms, sheep grazing is conducted where grasses grow. The city of Zaragosa is evidenced by a blue patch in from the right center edge. Low blocks of hills and mountains run northwest through the picture. The southern edge of the Sierra de Guara, which rises to more than 2000 m (6000 ft), is at the top.
Vegetation increases somewhat as one moves into central Spain in the region known as the Meseta (a plateau). This C-Band SRTM radar images shows Madrid and its surroundings:
This March 7, 1973 Landsat-1 image of central Spain shows the capital, Madrid (dark blue-black) to the west of the Tagus River. To its west is the Sierra de Guadarrama, wooded and high enough to have snow in the part that reaches 2400 m (8000 ft).
Madrid itself is shown in more detail in this Landsat-7 subscene.
The Palacio Real, the national palace now occupied by King Juan Carlos, is shown first in an IKONOS 2 m black and white image, and then in an aerial oblique view.
Southwest of Madrid is the city of Seville (locale for George Bizet's opera "Carmen"). Here is part of Seville as displayed in this Google Earth image:
On the western side of the Iberian Peninsula is Portugal, whose capital is Lisbon. It lies on the northwest side of a bay created by the Rio de Tejo (Tagus River). This area is shown first as a Landsat-4 subscene and then as an ERS SAR scene.
The tip of Europe at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea is the English Colony at Gibraltar, next to Spain. Across the Straits of Gibraltar lies Tangiers in Morocco. This European Space Agency image looks eastward.
On to Italy: Rome, the capital of modern Italy and of the Great Roman Empire of the late pre- and early-Christian eras, is visible as a large bluish-black blotch in from the center left of this Landsat-1 image, lying about 30 km (20 miles) inland east from the Tyrrhenian Sea at the port of Ostia. Rome is astride lowlands that, to the east, are up against the spine of Italy, the Apennine Mountains, which here are partly snow-covered in February. The Eternal City lies midway between two ancient volcanoes, the Sabatini caldera, water-filled with Lago di Bracciano to the northwest, and the Latian volcano to the southeast with its small lake along which Castel Gondolfo, the summer home of the Popes, is located.
A closer look at Latium, the province of Rome when it was a Republic, and Rome itself, extending to the sea at Ostia, is given in this Landsat-7 ETM+ image.
Although Athens may be considered the Cradle of Western Civilization, Rome is where not only hellenistic culture, but laws, great engineering feats, and the eventual center of pre-Byzantine Christianity all extended great influence on modern life. Because of the great historical significance of Rome, we will show several additional space and ground/aerial images to give you a better insight into this famed city. The first was taken by ESA's PROBA satellite.
Let's look into ancient (plus modern) Rome itself. This next image was taken by the IKONOS 4 meter resolution camera, and shows central Rome. Near the image center is the Rome of the Empire, with its cluster of famous buildings on the Seven Hills (including several forums, baths, the Pantheon, the Circus Maximus). The large buildings are on the Palantine Hill. Most conspicuous in the image is the great Coliseum (oval building)
This general map of central Rome should help you to search for several of the famed landmarks of this great city:
Now look at this model of ancient central Rome and try to locate some of the features shown in the above map:
The scene below zeros in on this colossal Roman Coliseum (well known to those who saw the movie "Gladiator"). In this IKONOS (Space Imaging Corp.) black and white image, autos in the modern world can be picked out but the sensor lacks the time device that could picture ancient lions on the floor of the Coliseum.
Much of this building survives today, as evident in this ground photo:
A must-see part of Rome actually isn't a legal segment of the city. The Vatican is a small (109 acres) enclave west of central Rome that is the smallest independent state in the world, i.e., technically is not part of Italy even though embedded in Rome. Here is a view of St. Peter, the world's largest church, with its two curved arms that embrace the huge square (Piazza) designed in the 16th Century by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
This is how the Vatican, with its great plaza that can hold hundreds of thousands of faithful when the Pope speaks from the balcony, looked to IKONOS in 2002:
With that as a landmark, try in this next aerial shot to locate the church, and the part of Rome that lies to its northeast. The large wooded area is a park known as the Villa Borghese. Try to find the circular Castel Sant' Angelo just off the Tiber River, where Tosca took her final leap in Puccini's opera of the same name.
(Europe continues on the next page.)
