Photo Details

Center pivot irrigation systems created these circular patterns in crop land near Garden City, Kansas. In this false-color satellite image, the red circles indicate irrigated crops of healthy vegetation. The light-colored circles represent harvested crops. Garden City, located just off the top edge of the image, is in Finney County in southwestern Kansas. The Arkansas River flows eastward across the upper right corner of the image. This part of western Kansas used to be short grass prairie, but has now given way to irrigated agriculture of corn, wheat, and sorghum. The water is drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer that underlies an area from Wyoming to Texas. Image courtesy of USGS.