SPACEPHOTOS

The dark blue waters of the Geri Reservoir in southeastern Venezuela are visible in the center of this northwest-looking, low-oblique photograph. The Geri Reservoir, built on the Caroní River in the early 1980s, provides water and electricity for steel plants and other industries around Guayana and irrigation projects along the Caroní River. Upon its completion in mid-1986, the dam produced more than 10 gigawatts of electricity, the first in the world to do so. The Caroní River, which originates in southeastern Venezuela near the border with Guyana, flows northward 550 miles (885 kilometers) and joins the sediment-filled Orinoco River near the city of Guayana (not easily discernible in the photograph). Before this photograph was taken, much forest (dark green) had been cleared south of the Orinoco River; subsequently, much land near the southern end of the reservoir and upstream of the Caroní River has been deforested, leading to silting problems within the reservoir.