In northern Pakistan on January 4, 2010, a landslide blocked the Hunza river. Soon a lake formed behind the landslide, which inundated farms, roads, and homes. As water levels rose behind the landslide, people lost their homes and there was an increasing fear that a catastrophic collapse of the dam would occur. Since then, Pakistan has been working to form a spillway in order to stabilize the water in the newly formed lake.
NASA took an image of the new lake in mid-March. This most recent image shows the water flowing over the spillway. Recent reports are that the water levels in the lake have stabilized, reducing the threat of flood should the dam give way.
The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of the landslide lake and its newly functioning spillway on July 7, 2010. North is to the right.
