Laguna Ojo de Liebre on the coast of Mexico
Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features Laguna Ojo de Liebre on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
The lagoon is located near the town of Guerrero Negro, which is about halfway between the US/Mexico border and the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. Laguna Ojo de Liebre is the site of one of the largest saltworks in the world.
“Each year, workers extract 9 million metric tons of salt by evaporating and crystallizing seawater in collection ponds that cover 33,000 hectares (82,000 acres). The evaporation and crystallization ponds surrounding Laguna Ojo de Liebre are featured in this natural-color image, which was acquired on March 23, 2022, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8,” reports NASA.
The lagoon is part of the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This protected area in Mexico is an important sanctuary for the North Pacific grey whale.
“The whales migrate between their winter nursery grounds in the lagoons and their summer feeding grounds in the Chukchi, Beaufort, and Bering seas,” says NASA. “Between January and March, some coastal towns host festivals celebrating the gray whales as they come to birth calves after their long migration. The lagoons also host countless other marine species and migrating birds.”
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
