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TO MATCH FEATURE MAURITANIA CARAVAN

A caravan of camels loaded with sacks of raw salt travels across the desert near Tichit, Mauritania December 5, 2006. Caught between an encroaching sea of sand and a towering rocky plateau, Tichit has been a staging post for more than nine centuries for camel caravans snaking across the Sahara. Picture taken December 5, 2006. TO MATCH FEATURE MAURITANIA CARAVAN REUTERS/David Rouge (MAURITANIA) - GM1DUQTJTXAA

Dust plumes off the Moroccan coast

February 10, 2008 - Dust plumes hundreds of kilometers long blow off the Moroccan coast. This satellite view captured the dust plumes mixing with clouds over the Atlantic Ocean the same day.
In this image, two largely parallel dust plumes blow off the coast. The northeast plume is more intense, thick enough in places to completely hide the water below. The other plume is thinner and shows faint wave patterns near the coast. In the northwest, the plumes thin and mingle, becoming one diffuse plume that blends with the clouds. Cloud cover nearly surrounds the dust plumes, and the clouds are especially heavy in the east.
Because clouds obscure much of Moroccoa??s land surface in this image, it does not show all the source points for the dust plumes. Some source points, however, appear just west of the clouds, especially for the thicker dust plume. Compared to neighboring countries to the south and east, Morocco is more mountainous and lacks the vast sand seas common in Mauritania and Algeria. According to the CIA world fact book, however, Morocco faces desertification from overgrazing, damage to vegetation, and farming in marginally productive areas. Stress on the land surface could contribute to dust storm formation

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Tenoumer Crater in Mauritania

January 24, 2008 - Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the Terra satellite captured this image of Tenoumer Crater in Mauritania, which lies deep in the Sahara Desert. Nearly a perfect circle, it is 1.9 kilometers (1.2 miles) wide, and sports a rim 100 meters (330 feet) high. In this simulated-true-color image, the arid landscape appears in varying shades of brick red, brown, and tan. The cratera??s outline is unmistakable, yet it doesna??t necessarily look like a crater; the light and shadows make it look more as if someone pressed a giant cookie cutter into the rock. In this image, the sunlight shines from the southeast (lower right), and the bright arc along the northwestern part of the crater is where the crater walls slope up to the rim. Around the perimeter, the relatively steep walls cast dark shadows. Although it resides in ancient rock, Tenoumer is geologically young, ranging in age between roughly 10, 000 and 30, 000 years old

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