A Sahara Desert Garden: Earth Image of the Week

Water from the mighty Nile River is used to irrigate crops hundreds of miles into the mainly barren Sahara Desert.

Emerging from southwestern Egypt’s vast Sahara desert wilderness is a complex of irrigated farmland that could be viewed in images from space as how a human colony on another planet might appear.

The project is made possible by an ambitious government undertaking to pump Nile River water stored in Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan Dam, through canals to areas hundreds of miles deep into the parched desert.

The New Valley Project was launched in 1997 in an attempt to developed a “new” valley, in addition to the Nile, where agriculture and industrial communities might thrive.

The government in Cairo hopes communities will spring up along the canal, and that new farmlands made possible by the imported water will be able to help feed Egypt’s rapidly growing population.

On March 17, 2009, NASA’s Terra satellite captured an image of the stark landscape in which one irrigated farm can be seen in contrast to the surrounding desert sand.

The enlarged section reveals circular areas of cultivation, where rotating sprinklers provide adequate irrigation for crops such as cotton, cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelons and wheat.

Image: NASA MODIS Rapid Response System