An overhead view of northwest England Today’s Image of the Day comes thanks to the European Space Agency and features an overhead view of northwest England.

The brown area in the center is the Forest of Bowland, which appears brown because the image was taken during the winter. The body of water in the upper left is Morecambe Bay.

This image was captured by the Sentinel-2A satellite on January 5, 2017.

A mix of rural and urban landscape, two large conurbations, centred on Liverpool and Manchester, occupy much of the south of the region. The north of the region, comprising Cumbria and northern Lancashire, is largely rural, as is the far south which encompasses parts of the Cheshire Plain and Peak District.

The region includes parts of three National parks (all of the Lake District, and small parts of the Peak District and the Yorkshire Dales) and three areas of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (all of Arnside and Silverdale and the Solway Coast, and almost all of the Forest of Bowland).

—North West England is one of nine official regions of England and consists of the counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The North West had a population of 7,052,000 in 2011. It is the third-most-populated region in the United Kingdom, after the South East and Greater London. The largest settlements are Manchester, Liverpool, Warrington, Blackpool, Preston, Stockport, Sale and Bolton.

By Rory Arnold, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: European Space Agency