Shasta Lake in northern California Today’s Image of the Day comes from the NASA Earth Observatory and features a look at Shasta Lake in northern California.

Shasta Lake is California’s largest reservoir and third-largest body of water, after Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea. It is held by the Shasta Dam, which is the ninth tallest dam in the United States.

This image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on board the Terra satellite.

Shasta Lake, also popularly known as Lake Shasta,  is a reservoir in Shasta County, California, United States. It began to store water in 1944 due to the impounding of the Sacramento River by Shasta Dam, the ninth tallest dam in the United States.

Shasta Lake is a key facility of the Central Valley Project and provides flood control for the Sacramento Valley downstream of the dam. Water outflow generates power through the Shasta Powerplant[4] and is subsequently used for irrigation and municipal purposes.

The reservoir lies within the Whiskeytown–Shasta–Trinity National Recreation Area, operated by the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has developed a safe eating advisory for fish caught in the lake based on levels of mercury or PCBs found in local species

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By Rory Arnold, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory