English: In northern Botswana, just above the arid Kalahari Desert, sits the salty remains of an ancient lake. Scientists estimate the massive Lake Makgadikgadi spanned somewhere between 80,000 to 275,000 square kilometers (30,900 to 106,200 square miles) at its peak, before tectonic shifts and changes in elevation turned the course of rivers that fed the lake. With limited inflow, the waters slowly began to evaporate, leaving behind a salty mineral crust. The collection of salt flats covers roughly 30,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) amidst desert and dry savanna in Botswana. Located in Makgadikgadi National Park and Nxai Pan National Park, the salt pans are rivaled in extent only by the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

On December 11, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a false-color image of Botswana’s famous salt pans. The large, shallow pan on the left (west) is Ntwetwe Pan. On the right (east) lies Sua Pan, two of the major pans of Makgadikgadi.

The stark landscape of the salt pan typically appears almost uniformly white in true-color images, as the mineral crust often lies over water, hiding the moisture from view. False-color allows a more detailed look at the composition of the salt pans. In this image, water appears blue, vegetation green, and non-vegetated land tan or pinkish. Dry salt does appear white, yet when it is moistened and contains water, it takes on a blue tint. As the moisture content increases, the blue tint deepens. Both pans become nearly dry in summer (the dry season). As rains begin, typically by late November, water begins to soften the mineral crust and moisten the pans. More than 165 species of birds flock to the area, including both the Greater and Lesser Flamingo.