Most meteors that arrive at Earth burn up in the atmosphere, and others are washed away by our moving surface and erosion. Regardless, if you know where to look, you might be surprised how many impact craters you can find. As with part one of this series. we’re going to look at some of the most visible:

Clearwater Lakes, Canada – These two lakes were formed simultaneously from a meteor that broke apart in our atmosphere and crashed into the surface over 290 million years ago. The largest of the lakes is over 20 miles (32 km) across! As you can guess by their name, both are known for their remarkably clear water.

Bosumtwi, Ghana – This nearly perfect circular crater is Ghana’s only natural lake. Carved out of crystalline bedrock found in the West African Shield, Lake Bosumtwi was formed over 1.3 million years ago. The crater is an impressive 6 miles (10.5 km) across.

Deep Bay, Canada – Another striking circular crater, this lake in Saskatchewan, Canada was formed around 100 million years ago by a very large meteorite. The impact left a hole 8 miles (13 km) wide that over time filled with water from nearby Reindeer Lake.

Wolfe Creek, Australia – This relatively young and small crater has been preserved in the arid desert of northern Australia. It’s partially buried under the continuous streams of sand that blows through the region. Estimated to be a mere 300,000 years old, this crater is less than a kilometer wide and was only discovered by scientists in 1947.

Aorounga Crater, Chad – Yet another crater somewhat preserved by a desert landscape, the Aorounga Crater in Africa is almost 8 miles (12.9 km) wide. But when the area was scanned by Space Shuttle SIR-C radar, images revealed two more rings of similar size (possibly 2 more craters) to the east of the visible crater. If all of these craters were formed at once, scientists believe the meteor could have been anywhere from a half-mile to full mile across!

Southwest Egypt – This crater is one of the most recent discoveries by scientists using new tools like Google Earth. Found using satellite images in 2008, this small crater in the deserts of southwestern Egypt is only 45 meters wide and perhaps a few thousand years old. It makes you wonder if the Egyptians knew anything about it!

Be sure to check out Part 1 in this series touring Earth’s impact craters.

Locations: Australia, Chad, Egypt, Ghana, Quebec, Saskatchewan / Categories: Deserts, Natural Landmarks

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Fair traders have established a number of organisations, notably the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO), and national licensing bodies such as the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK, and Transfair in the USA and Canada. Transfair’s Google Earth layer has made it easy to locate fair trade suppliers.²

Above we see icons for a pair of cocoa growing cooperatives – CONACADO in the Dominican Republic and Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana. The members of the latter are (partly) direct owners of Divine Chocolate produced in the UK.³

Craft producers are not currently certified by Transfair, but many commodities are. In India (and several other countries) we can see the icons for rice – the Federation of Small Farmers – and tea – the most excellent Makaibari Tea Estate in Darjeeling, where we do get a good look at the tea terraces.

There are a large number of coffee producers, such as this cluster in Peru, where we can also see the icon for fruit growers.

The WFTO sets global standards for the operation of fair trade businesses, including fair pay, protection of the environment, gender equity and more.

The national licensing bodies certify that goods have been produced within minimum fair trade standards. They also encourage communities to promote fair trade by becoming fair trade towns, villages or cities – meaning that a certain number of qualifying businesses include some fair trade products in their offerings.

The first such community to achieve this goal was Garstang in England, which proudly shows this on the road signs at the entrance to the town.

The majority of fair trade producers in developing countries work in distributed groups, and generally at small farms or workshops, meaning they are hidden in areas where the satellite imagery is very low resolution. However, I have been able to track down one location in Bangladesh – the workshop of Biborton Handmade Paper, in the village of Agailjhara.

Biborton – part of the Prokritee agency – is a group of approximately 70 women working to create paper, which they then transform into greeting cards, gift bags and more. At the right time of day the grassy central courtyard would be a colourful field of paper drying in the sun.

The building at the top of the image is their office and workshop where final products are assembled. The building on the left is where fibres are processed into paper. They also have a number of metal-sided kilns that allow paper to be dried and production to continue even during the monsoon season.

Visit the World Fair Trade Day website to find events in your area.

Locations: Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, England, Ghana, India, Peru / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views

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Firstly we have this enormous length of tape, which is actually holding Ghana and Ivory Coast together. Not high-resolution on this one, but at the eastern end the tape fades out rather prettily into some lovely clouds.

Next up is this semi-transparent tape stitching a large section of the Libyan desert together. Notice how all of these anomalies run at very similar angles across the images?

Finally we have this shoddy looking job in Russia, which appears to have required two pieces of tape to get the job done! I think their mistake was trying to tape water together…

Thanks: Dave, Winterfresh, Alxdr, mcb, blumentopf and MoonFella.

Locations: Ghana, Ivory Coast, Libya, Russia / Categories: Weirdness

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