# Guineabissau oli 2018137 lrg

- By: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kasha…
- Date: 2018-05-17
- Classification: Photograph
- Credit line: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92266/the-meandering-estuaries-of-guineabissau
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guineabissau_oli_2018137_lrg.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/commons/thumb/1/1a/Guineabissau_oli_2018137_lrg.jpg/1920px-Guineabissau_oli_2018137_lrg.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Estuaries near the coast of Guinea–Bissau branch out like a network of roots from a plant. With their long tendrils, the rivers meander through the country’s lowland plains to join the Atlantic Ocean. On the way, they carry water, nutrients, but also sediments out from the land. This natural–color image captures the movement of the sediments as the rivers move east to west. The image was acquired on May 17, 2018, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. The discoloration is most apparent in Rio Geba, which runs past the country’s capital city of Bissau.

These estuaries play an important role in agriculture. This small west African country is mostly made up of flat terrain that only stands 20 to 30 meters (65 to 98 feet) above sea level. The coastal valleys flood often, especially during the rainiest part of the year (summer), and can have damaging effects on infrastructure, agriculture, and public health. But at non–devastating levels, the rains make the valleys good locations for farming, especially rice cultivation.

Much of the agricultural land is created by destroying mangroves, which act a natural barrier between the land and the water. For instance, a lot of…