NASA MODIS Image of the Day: December 13, 2011 – Flooding in Southern Pakistan
In September 2011 heavy monsoon rains flooded parts of southern Pakistan and, three months later, some areas remained inundated.
On December 8, 2011 the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed over the region and captured this true-color image of the extensive flooding.
Rolling over the image will reveal a second image of the region captured two years before, on December 7, 2009. Both images use a combination of visible and infrared light to better distinguish between water and land. Water varies in color from electric blue to navy. Vegetation is green, and bare ground is pink-beige. Compared to 2009 conditions, flooding is apparent in 2011. Standing water covers large areas east of the Indus River, near the center of the image. In addition, the Rann of Kachchh (or Kutch), a salt marsh, seen in the lower right corner of the image, clearly holds far more water than two years ago. Despite the obvious heavy flooding, the conditions on December 12 are a considerable improvement over those of September 2011. On December 1, 2011, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued a status report on the flooding in southern Pakistan. As temperatures were dropping, humanitarian agencies were distributing winterization items to flood-affected citizens, and had provided emergency shelter to about 445,000 households. As of early December, however, many areas that had been flooded in September remained under water and inaccessible to aid agencies.
