English: On November 14, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of southeastern Egypt. Orange and tans mark the sand and rock of the almost rainless plateau of the eastern Sahara. Nubian sandstone forms the base of most of the region and provides the source of the copious sand found here, with the sand created as the sandstone weathered.

With precipitation rare, the presence of water allows life to flourish. The Nile River winds through the desert, creating a sinuous ribbon of green as vegetation grows on the banks and floodplains. Gray smudges, appearing in the green ribbon, mark the presence of human cities, which also require water to flourish. Outside of the Nile River and the lakes created by Nile water, settlements in southeastern Egypt rely on the rare oasis—a fertile spot where water is found in the desert.

Along the Nile is found one of the world’s largest artificial lakes, Lake Nasser. Between 1960 and 1970, the Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser was responsible for the creation of the Aswan High Dam, which stretches across the Nile, and allowed the creation of the massive lake.

The Aswan High Dam is the newer of the two dams in this area. The older of these dams is known as the Aswan Low Dam, or simply the Aswan Dam. Completed in 1902, the older dam had nearly overflowed by the middle of the 20th century, despite having been raised twice. Instead of raising it a third time, officials chose to build a new dam upriver.

The Aswan High Dam has not, however, proven immune to overflowing. High levels of rainfall led to the creation of four new lakes in the region in the late 1990s. Today the fading remnants of these lakes, known as the Tosha Lakes, can easily be seen from space west of Lake Nasser. Irrigation projects have been created to bring water to the desert to support agriculture. One such area is marked by gray-green smudges in the lower left (southwest) in this image. When viewed at high resolution, the smudges are revealed as numerous circles, created by irrigation.