High Dunes in the Namib Desert

Credit: Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Posted on: Saturday, 11 October 2003, 06:00 CDT Download full size image

Namib-Naukluft National Park is an ecological preserve in the Namib Desert in southwest Africa, thought to be Earth’s oldest desert. The park is the largest game park in Africa, and a surprising collection of creatures manages to survive in the hyper-arid region, including snakes, geckos, unusual insects, hyenas, and jackals. More moisture comes in as a fog off the Atlantic Ocean than falls as rain, with the average 63 millimeters of rainfall per year concentrated in the months of February and April. This perspective view was created by draping an ASTER color image over an ASTER-derived Digital Elevation Model of the topography.

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