Bahia's western border with Goiás and Tocantins, with and without boundaries on the map. It's defined by an abrupt drop of a couple hundred meters from a densely cultivated plateau in the east to more sparsely occupied lowlands in the west.

In USSR people tried to write something with landscape.

People, of course, try to do this now, but mostly with less permanent ways, like with painted letters on building roofs or some other things.

In my childhood this would have really interested me, now I rarely if ever check these.
So I'll share a thought something else, about a thing that was already posted, this Strava Heatmap. These aren't a satellite images but whatever, here's the link once more:
https://www.strava.com/heatmap#3.12/-4.60975/38.22672/hot/all
As I know the woods in certain areas where I live I can judge by now how much traffic each road, trail, path gets and the "heat" mirrors this very well despite these maps only document certain sport activities (mostly running/jogging and cycling) as most of the time only sportsmen use these gps devices and not the average tourist.

Also, let me draw attention to a previous post of mine, here:
>>17901
These aren't sat images either, but at least real aerial photos.

A stretch of the infamous BR-230/Transamazonian highway, where the previously described pattern of deforestation is also visible. If you pay attention, you can see it cutting through the jungle at an altitude of as much as 30 thousand km.

>>20422
A while ago an American base in Syria accidentally showed up on that map (or some other athletic tracking service) because servicemen were using it.
There are visible differences in usage from country to country and region to region, as is clear within Belgium. I wonder if it'd be possible to multiply every region's heat in order to correct it to someothing closer to its population and thus get a "pure" map representing only road usage rather than road usage + app usage. Some lesser roads do not appear at all in areas where the service sees little use, but relatively dense areas (such as the Rhineland) seen with a low resolution would appear quite close to the densest areas (England, Flanders).

>These aren't sat images either, but at least real aerial photos.
They're good enough for the purpose of this thread.

Unusual stripes in Altai Krai. A Wikimedia image description offers an explanation:

>In June 2014, the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) called down to Houston to ask for an explanation of this strange pattern of spikes crossing the Kulunda Steppe in central Russia. The “spikes” are a prominent visual feature when the ISS is at the top of its orbit (52 degrees north, the highest latitude flown over by the spacecraft). Scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center were able to provide an answer.
>The linear zones in the image are gentle folds in the surface rocks of the area; they lie slightly lower than the surrounding, lighter-toned agricultural lands. The dark zones are forested with pines and dotted with salt-rich lakes.

Mezőtárkány is an 850+ years old settlement on the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain (first appearance in documents is from 1279). Her layout is a variation of the clustered settlement pattern, here it's called something like "double-plot-cluster" type. It's a typical Hungarian layout tho I can imagine to occur in other countries with notable steppe type landscape as it derived from the nature of horse herders.
Steppe people aren't really nomads as nomads live the same lifestyle all year long, with the change of the seasons they only change their habitat and not their habits. Nomads move either along a north-south axis so they can enjoy the same weather both summer and winter, or along the elevation for the same reason. Wherever and whenever they are they do the same animal related activities all year round. Steppe people on the other hand graze their livestock in the summer, they change pastures if need arises (which can lead to war and forcing other tribes to move) but these pastures are all in the same climate and then as winter comes they move to winter quarters along rivers - but which are in the same elevation and latitude - where they butcher the excess livestock and stay put during the whole winter feeding fodder to the animals. Then as spring comes they move out the pastures again. I think sometimes this is called half-nomadism but there's no exact definition. Not that I saw at least.
So these "double-plot-cluster" layout is based on the winter quarters. The yurts were set up in random places (not necessarily in random order which might have been influenced by rank, prestige) but around a central open space and the animals were placed in the outer ring. If that particular place was used for a longer period (probably advantageous for harvesting and storing fodder for winter) then more permanent buildings were erected than yurts. Later in place of yurts they built houses on small plots in the inner cluster and pens, stables, barns in the outer circle. Ofc slowly the proportions of the animals changed, less horse, more swine, poultry, bovine, goat and sheep. So a family owned one plot in the middle for their residence and one plot in the outside circle for husbandry, hence the name "double-plot".
The main roads - the herding lanes - of such settlements run radially from the center, and these roads were connected by ring of roads in a disorderly fashion. There was also a main ring which divided the nucleus and the outer circle. Sometimes this road had some fortification to increase safety.
Later as the population grew and the economy changed and people relied less on their livestock for living the outer circle filled up with residences.
I have three images of Mezőtárkány, a drawing from 1869, the aerial photo from 1964 (changed the contrast, sadly couldn't dl the original, so this is also just a screenshot), and the screenshot I made today.

One of the planned layout settlement types is the round settlement. Can be found all around the world, great for defensive purposes - to some extent. In north, north-eastern Germany, in Wendland they were very popular in the Middle Ages. Wanted to find some examples from Africa where maybe Hottentots and Hereros build similars. Especially because the Hereros had fire altars or some such in the middle of their villages. Couldn't really find on short notice.

How does one make the landmarks and signs go away on google's maps anyway?

>>20476
Here's another example of double-plot-cluster.
The thing with cluster pattern is that it is an unplanned, "organic" development, they built their houses where they wanted to and not according to a will higher in the social hierarchy.
Round settlements however were planned out beforehand so it should be more noticeable.

I also took screens on a third example, but I might want to draw/outline something on them and speculate about it.

>>20476
>But I still think a geologic explanation is the culprit, and data on wheter this orientation extends to the underground or is merely a surface phenomenon could clarify the mystery.

I couldn't easily find straightforward data even in Russian, most of internet articles talk about Altai mountains, but rarely discuss local plains.

Although some sources say that this type of terrain is common for West Siberian Plain. They use word "Грива" (literally "mane") that translates to "low ridge" or "dike ridge", but it even has no English wiki page and I don't have enough geological knowledge to find proper term.

>Flooding is unlikely to spawn this kind of terrain.

Some theories say that terrain like this may be formed because of flooding, although not average flooding of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_current_ripples

>>20484
So the other typical example of the double-plot-cluster pattern is Hajdúnánás, north from Hajdúböszörmény.
It was mentioned the first time about 1220 it already had a church. I marked the two churches of the town with blue crosses the northern is Reformed the southerly is the Roman Catholic. The settlement was destroyed a few times in it's history so the Catholic temple might not stand where it was originally.
Up to the 1600's it was a village, when the Ottomans occupied the area it had 25 taxable plots which meant 25 tenant families theoretically. There were tricks to evade such taxes and more than one families might had lived on one plot, also a family usually meant extended family with three generations and many siblings living together. I don't know how many plots were there which enjoyed exempt from such tax. At the beginning of the 1600's about 1800-2000 hajdú was settled there, a semi-militant societal group which enjoyed noble like privileges in return military service. Only by the second half of the 19th century became crop cultivation the leading agricultural sector instead of animal husbandry. Today it has a population of approximately 17 000 souls.
The town main feature is the two rings. The Small Ring encircles the Downtown, which is the Old Town and marked the divide between the residential core and the economic buildings on the "second plots", it was fortified and pieces of the wall can be found even today. Because the Calvinist temple seem to be at a more central position and because all the things mentioned above I guess this structure is fairly late and it might not preserve the original pattern from the Middle Ages.
The Large Ring marks the outer edge of the newly built residential zone, outside of it the checkers patterned, planned zones can be observed, with mostly dachas and a few permanent habitats.

Trivia: they have an ostrich farm nearby, I seem to recall from recent news they don't have any ostriches anymore tho.

Stirling Range in Westralia. Notice the abrupt transition from farmland to the National Park.

some boomer shit that wastes resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_pivot_irrigation

I had this idea to find shots of the mythical Csörsz árka (Ditch of Csörsz).
It's long lines of ditches and banks on and around the Great Hungarian Plain, running about 600 kms long (one article said over 1200 kms, which is literal bullshit considering the Carpathians are 1500 kms, and these run on a way shorter arc, some places however there are couple of parallel lines, maybe they calculated their length too). Ofc after a little look-see my idea seems futile because now they are unnoticeable even tho archaeologists use aerial recon when they wish to do their diggings around it. If I knew exactly where those ditches run I might could spot them here and there but the maps I found are quite inaccurate due to their scale.
So no interesting satellite image for Bernd now.
This system of ditches and banks has many folksy names since the people came up quite a few myths of origin. Some calls it Devil's Ditch, they say the devil plowed them, or a giant. The name I mentioned first also comes from a folk legend which says it was built on the order of an Avar khagan, called Csörsz noosr js nooqrs, so he could transport her newly wedded wife home on water because that was the wish of his father-in-law. This tale at least related to a likely theory, that these ditches and banks were built for water flow control.
Another group of great tale producers historians and archaeologists named it Limes Sarmatiae creating the impression that Romans called like this. They did not. In fact the first documented mention of this dyke-trench system come from the 11-12th centuries. Anyway right now the "offical scientific" explanation is that the Sarmatians built them with Roman help and direction as a defense line against other barbarian tribes, like Goths. They aren't bothered by such facts that at not one places the ditch is on the western side while the bank is on the east.
I don't think it's even sure that they were built in the same time, but they are dated to the times of Sarmatians (4th century) because a few crosscut excavations found Sarmatian pottery fragments just below of them. Tho this only means the structures can't be older (but not necessarily from the same age, so they could be way younger).
Anyway there's a nice reconstructed example just east of Debrecen, how they imagine it looked like or supposed to be looked like (but never finished by the Romans).

Conspicuous elevation tearing through the coastal plain in Rio de Janeiro. It's only 650 m wit h a 2-2,5 km radius but easy to notice as it's surrounded by flat land only a few meters above sea level and nobody bothered to deforest it. A vulcanic origin has been suggested but there is counterevidence, such as the lack of eruption-generated stone.

The Atlantic coast of the Sahara is just hopelessly desolate. Elsewhere cities are clearly visible gray splotches but here there's so much sand they blend into the surrounding deserts. On Nouakchott the city center is gray but the suburbs gradually fade away into the wasteland, as if they themselves were becoming part of the desert. On closer inspection the central neighborhoods also have a lot of sand but they have asphalt and it's dust-free aswell as trees.

There are few settlements on the coast, or at all. The buildings are shoddy and scattered.
And yet on Cape Blanc Nouadhibou has a population over 100 thousand with port facilities.

Cape Blanc has two other points of interest. South of Nouadhibou lies Cansado which is smaller and dustier. Cansado means "tired" in Portuguese.
The West Saharan side is a completely vacuum, the only built area being the ruins of Lagouira. According to Wikipedia:
>By 2002, it had been abandoned and partially overblown by sand, inhabited only by a few Imraguen fishermen[4][5] and guarded by a Mauritanian military outpost, despite this not being Mauritanian territory.[5]
>the western side is currently policed by Mauritania, as neither Morocco nor the Polisario Front occupies the area.
It's just completely forgotten by anyone who lays claim to it. No roads or airport leading to the sole settlement which is being swallowed by the dunes. The vast Atlantic crashes its waves on the beach.

These are the Finger Lakes in the United Statia. Recently someone posted a couple of pictures of them, looked mildly interesting so I run a search.
They are glacial products, overdeepened valleys. 11 + 1 lay just south of Lake Ontario. Two of them are notable of being among the deepest lakes in the US, with 133 and 188 meters of depth.

Thanks to Geowizard (specifically to this video: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Gs8_imDcII8) I found something.
This road is in Kuwait. It seems they planned four crossroads on road 801 in E-W direction. First screenshots from openstreetmap, then google.
I understand the southernmost, which would allow an already existent road to run directly toward a port on that eastern island. But the other three?

It seems the second from the south, nothing came out of it.
Did they scrap the project, or they are at the very beginning?
No idea when the google sat images were made.

>>47395
Likely explanation. But maybe it was part of an ambitious plan that was torpedoed by events.
They have other ongoing or failed projects. And some urban planning I. Probably further south in these oil emirates and such must be quite a few.

Aridity gradients, stripes, endorheic basins and pixellated farmland.

Bolivians experimenting with different ways to distribute plots of land.

Egypt is trying to create farmland and living space outside the valley of the Nile since the population growth is forcing them to. One area is SE from the delta, the other is in the south, where they plan to refill the Toshka lakes (which are man made in the firs place), and the lands would surround those.
Basically this is a terraforming effort.
https://eros.usgs.gov/media-gallery/earthshot/toshka-project-egypt
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/115145/Toshka-agricultural-project-revived-amid-Egypt%E2%80%99s-hope-to-achieve-self

So I was screenshotting the SE shores of Kyushu, and nearby small islands. Lemme tell you I found some scenic ones. Inspiring romanticism. The most notable difference between the state of medieval fishing village and modern one are these concrete embankments and the asphalt road snaking behind. Ofc they had roads similarly at the shore, following the feet of the hills.

Here's an site listing types of ships/boats Japans used "back in the day" before they modernized.
https://theropetokyo-en.jimdofree.com/japanese-ships-1/model-ships-of-japanese-boats/
Two examples of fishing boats. The first one is a trawler.

The hills are the most decisive factors how the settlements followed the landscape. But three more defining feature I found:
1. actual beaches, that gently sloping into the water
2. rivers
3. open flatland
Now I have to note, now these settlements aren't necessarily "fishing" ones, despite the boats. At some google explicitly wrote it is. Or at least the port is for fishing boats.
Here are some types I found representative:
#1 This is similar to this >>50443, where the houses follow the shore on a longer distance, in a couple houses depth, occasionally a road leading inside depending on the size of the village.
#2 The houses are bunched up in a valley at a narrow beach.
#3 The valley/s offer flat lands where they can cultivate rice or some such.
#4 More often then not a stream or river will run in the main valley, offering more space to build and for cultivation.

Anosibe Ambohiby, a village created by settlers like 15 years ago, on Madagascar.
Another cool stuff from Vox, similar to this: >>48149
It's surprising that there are places on this Earth, where people can just get the idea and move to a remote place and create their own settlement noone knows about, and live in relative peace, on their own. And a good feeling too.
But now people know about them and have to pay taxes.

>>51605
This and their other video on Saharan circles was just what I yearned for, I wish they'd do more on this format.

>It's surprising that there are places on this Earth, where people can just get the idea and move to a remote place and create their own settlement noone knows about, and live in relative peace, on their own.
You can find private ventures founding new settlements on newly deforested land less than 50 years ago, but those made every effort to connect themselves with the rest of the world. To be fair, Anosibe Ambohiby isn't a closely guarded secret, they have to sell their crops and buy consumer and capital goods and some or most of this trade necessarily happens in the nearby villages. Given enough time and insistent interviews, the film crew could have gathered at least superficial information on Anosibe without entering the massif.

This blog post makes important questions:
https://christiankull.net/2023/12/09/tany-malalaka-settling-new-land-in-the-western-highlands-of-madagascar/
> Haubursin’s excellent video opens up many more questions. I’d love to learn more from the farmers of Anosibe Ambohiby – how did they negotiate access to the land with nearby villagers and the cattle grazers used to free rein in the crater grasslands? How do they manage the free-burning pastures fires that must annually come close to their new orchards? Do they have connections to a trustworthy citrus merchant who regularly buys their oranges and lemons? And finally, what is the impact of their new-found internet fame? Will it bring more settlers seeking out the volcanic soils and plentiful water? Will it bring government services or the tax man? Will it bring dahalo cattle rustlers and thieves?
They even filmed cattle on the road to the village, and another notable piece of evidence is the village elder's story - he got to know the area while trading cattle. I saw no fences but that land did belong to someone, no matter how loose property claims may have been. And Anosibe's settlers must have had a good degree of pooled wealth to invest in buying land in the area, they are successful cash crop producers after all.

One of the video's themes is the inaccessibility of certain locations from the Internet. But being unlabelled is the default state for the entire planet. Urban areas are the exception, you can expect Google Maps to name just about every single street. Rural areas have no streets but they do have equivalents to neighborhoods, and those are hard to find on the Internet. I know one such case easily accessible by a state highway, with a sign on the road and well known by locals, and yet Google has no trace of it. You might find such places by downloading massive PDF maps or shapefiles from government databases.

Another line of circles. Lines of circles, many of them. This time in Iran.

So these are part of irrigation systems, 11 all in all registered at UNESCO. Chains of wells and tunnels to channel water from below the hillsides to the settlements. They idea is some three thousand years old, and they are working and maintained today still. Some article I found said that about 40K people's water is supported by them.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1506/