Forest Recovering From Mount St. Helens Eruption

  • Released Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption was one of the most significant natural disasters in the US in the past half-century. The eruption laid waste to 230 square miles. Landsat captured the extent of the destruction, with grey tones revealing widespread lava flows and ash deposits. Subsequent Landsat images over the years show the spread of vegetation recovery across the site.

Timelapse of Mt. St. Helens and surrounding area from 1979 to 2010, as imaged by Landsat satellites.

From 1979-1983 the images are shown in false-color, where red indicates healthy vegetation. From 1984-2010, the images are shown in natural-color.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Images used from NASA's Earth Observatory:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sthelens.php

Landsat is a joint program of NASA and USGS:
http://landsat.usgs.gov
http://www.nasa.gov/landsat

Release date

This page was originally published on Tuesday, May 18, 2010.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:54 PM EDT.


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