Highlights
More than three months after floods first struck Pakistan, flood waters lingered west of the Indus River. At the beginning of November, the high waters were receding, but only slowly.
Acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite, these false-color images show a portion of the Indus River and irrigated land to the west. The images document the formation of a massive floodwater lake terminating in Manchhar or Manchar Lake.All of these images use a combination of infrared and visible light to increase the contrast between water and land. Clouds appear in varying shades of light blue-green. Vegetation is green, and bare ground is pinkish brown. Water varies in color from electric blue to navy.
The first image is from September 3, 2010, after floods have devastated much of the country. Water flow in the Indus River narrows at Sukkur, but water fills the river valley north and south of the city. Thanks to a dam failure north of Sukkur, vast amounts of water have been channeled west of the river and now sit on areas that are normally cultivated or settled land. Nevertheless, Manchhar Lake, typically an isolated water body, remains detached from flood waters to the north.The middle image is from October 2, 2010. The Indus River’s levels have fallen back to near-normal levels, though the river valley appears mostly free of vegetation, perhaps filled with saturated mud. While water levels have fallen in the Indus, a massive floodwater lake forms a giant arc west of the river, extending from well north of Sukkur to Manchhar Lake.
The bottom image is from November 1, 2010. Compared to one month before, water levels have fallen in the floodwater lake, but only slightly. Manchhar Lake remains connected to flood waters to the north.On October 29, CNN reported that large areas in Pakistan’s Sindh Province remained underwater and some 7 million Pakistanis still lacked adequate shelter. Despite the prolonged hardship, Oxfam stated that international aid was dwindling. On November 1, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that, although the threat of waterborne gastrointestinal disease was receding, the threat of mosquito-borne disease, such as malaria, was rising, thanks to stagnant pools of water in low-lying, poorly drained areas. Large areas of inundated cropland also increased the hazard of malnutrition.
The source article Flooding in Pakistan : Natural Hazards was published November 1, 2010 by NASA Earth Observatory .
