Fall Colors from Space

October, 2013 satellite view of folded Appalachain Mountains in Eastern Pennsylvania

The NASA satellite AQUA captured this October image of eastern Pennsylvania and its rusty brown-colored ridgelines of the Appalachian Mountains. The NASA website also shows a comparision with the same view from the more ‘summery’ September.  Here in in the Colorado Rockies, we enjoy similar October colors at ground level- albeit with less color diversity than our Appalachian counterparts.  Aside from the season, what ties both images together are the nature of the ridges- parts of folded mountain belts of different ages. The vegetation here in the foothills of the Rockies flanks the sandstone ridges. In Eastern Pennsylvania, hues of gold, yellow and red deciduous trees cover the ridges. Now to totally confound it all, the age of the Colorado rocks are Pennsylvanian in age.

Yellow cottonwood trees flank the red sandstones of the Fountain & Ingleside Formations in Lory State Park, Colorado