The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has captured an image of El Oued, a town in northeast Algeria, located around an oasis in the northern Sahara. The image shows the town as a dark elongated area in the centre, surrounded by gold sand dunes shaped by the wind. The image has been processed using the mission’s near-infrared channel to display vegetation in red, with irrigated vegetation shown in bright red and non-irrigated areas appearing in darker red tones. Most of the agricultural fields in the image are circular, indicating that central-pivot irrigation systems are being used. Each circle is around 100m in diameter and a well, drilled in the centre of each circle, supplies water to rotating sprinklers that spray water in a circular pattern. The main crops grown here include potatoes, onions and tomatoes. Date palms are also very important for the local economy and are typically grown using traditional methods inside irregular funnel-shaped fields in the sand. Copernicus Sentinel-2 plays a key role in mapping differences in land cover to understand how it is used and to track changes over time, which is useful for monitoring desertification. The mission also provides measurements of water quality and detects changes in water bodies, supporting sustainable water management – a valuable tool for arid areas where water is scarce.
