Rusty Red Waters in Madagascar

Those rust-colored channels spreading across the land are the Betsiboka River Delta in northwestern Madagascar, photographed by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station on September 30, 2023. The vivid red-orange is not paint or a trick of the camera. It is iron-rich sediment, washed down from the island's interior and carried out toward the sea. After Madagascar lost much of its forest cover to farming and logging, heavy rains began stripping away the exposed earth, staining the water this deep color as it flows downstream.

All that sediment has a double life. It can clog the waterways of the delta's estuary, but it also builds new islands over time, and those islands become home to mangroves. The branching green shapes scattered through the water are exactly that kind of growth taking hold. Despite its rusty appearance, this stretch of water matters enormously for wildlife. The estuary grows seagrasses that feed the endangered green turtle and the vulnerable dugong, or sea cow. What looks like an abstract composition is really a living, changing habitat, and a record of how quickly a landscape can transform.