I found volcanoes in a landscape where I wasn’t expecting volcanoes… It turns out, a variety of cinder cones, maars (shallow craters), basalt flows, and even a stratovolcano stretch along nearly the entire western portion of Saudi Arabia due to hotspot activity. These landscapes, called harrats, are often distinguishable in satellite imagery from sandy deserts by their black lava flows.

In this image, the large volcano to the right (north) is Jabal Qidr (~2000m), the tallest in Saudi Arabia, which strongly contrasts the unusual White Volcanos, which gain their color from comendite (a light igneous rock). From a scientific standpoint, it appears that these volcanoes are somewhat neglected, perhaps due to their inaccessibility (and I couldn’t even find a Wikipedia article if that means anything). A tourist website claims that 50+ kilometers of dirt roads are needed to reach the site, which have been dubiously cleared of volcanic rock by Bedouin tribes to prevent tire punctures. Meanwhile, a study from 2006 cites this region’s unexplored lava tubes as untouched potential for archaeologists and volcanologists.

From an image standpoint, this view was collected on December 12, 2019. Sentinel satellites have a sun synchronous orbit, which is actually really clever (perhaps another article, another time). Without going into detail, this means that the satellite passes overhead at the same time each day (mean solar time) such that the solar angle is consistent throughout the year. This is great for science, but makes the landscape seem flat. Nonetheless, small changes in shadows still occur, which emphasize the landscape slightly more in the winter, as shown here.

Satellite data from ESA’s Copernicus program. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.