Stock Photo - EARTH Iraq / Iran -- 26 March / 04 May 2000 -- Landsat satellite imagery reveals that in the last 10 years, wetlands that once covered as much as 20,000 square km (7,725 square miles) in parts of Iraq and Iran have been reduced to about 15 percent of their original size. This false-colour composite was aquired on the two dates mentioned above from the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+). Most of Iraq's Central Marshes appear here as olive green to greyish-brown patches - indicating low vegetation cover on moist to dry ground. Light grey patches are areas of ground with no vegetation, which by 2000 had become salt flats (where once there were lakes). The Al Hawizeh Marsh (which straddles the Iran-Iraq border east of the River Tigris) appears on this image to be all that remained of the Iraqi Marshes by mid-2000. Compare this image with two others of the same area from the 1970s (see LR0001545) and 1990 (see LR001546) and the damage done to the region, largely caused by Saddam Hussien's decision to drain the Marshes - after the 1990 Gulf War to spite the Marsh Arabs who daringly opposed his regime. Other damage to this environment was due to extensive damming of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which provide most of the water for the marshes. After the 2003 US & British invasion of Iraq, the Marshes are receiving their natural inflows again, though it may take years for this environment to recover after an 85% demise in Marshland areas which is clearly visible in these three images -- Picture ©ÊLightroom Photos / NASA.