SPACEPHOTOS

Iya River, Russia October 1994. The Russian city of Tulun (left center) is situated on the north flowing Iya River (meandering, thin dark lines that runs vertically through the middle of the picture). Sections of several manmade structures including a pipeline, a highway, a power line, and a railroad are located in an east-west corridor that can be traced across the landscape in the vicinity of Tulun. The railroad is especially significant since it is part of the Trans Siberian Railroad that connects Moscow with Vladivostok, a distance of 6000 miles (9655 km). The rural area around Tulun is agrarian, where the runoff from the mountains to the south brings alluvium to enrich the soil and provides sufficient water for irrigated farming (notice the large, angular-looking, multicolored field patterns). The lighter-colored area near the center of the image but east of the Iya River, are ground scars created by the surface mining activities.