Today’s caption is excerpted from our new image series World of
Change: Green Seasons of Maine. The middle latitudes of Earth
have seasons of weather and a wide diversity of landscapes and
vegetation. But not many mid-latitude locations have year-round
greenery and distinct seasons, as they do in central Maine. The
Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite
captured these images centered on the small towns of Howland and
West Enfield, Maine, on April 14 and July 15, 2008. Though
spring begins on March 20, central Maine was still shedding its
blanket of winter snow in mid-April, revealing brown farmland,
deciduous forest, and shrubland that struggle to sprout buds in
the raw springtime of New England. By July, the landscape is
covered in bright green of full growth. (Visit this page to see
five more images across the seasons.) One constant in the images
is the green, as Maine has the highest percentage of forest
cover in the United States (about 86 percent). Central Maine
lies along the t