Norman Kuring

@normankuring.bsky.social

52 Followers 39 Following

I'm a happy nature lover who's at the same time sad to see how poorly we are treating the only home that we humans share with our fellow blue-planet life forms.

Closeup view of a white clover flower
Pink, mostly hairless baby mice
The tans, grays, browns, and greens of New Jersey fill the upper left corner of this image while the blues, aquamarines, and greens, and browns of the Atlantic Ocean swirl in the remainder of the image. The data for this image were collected by Landsat 8 / OLI on April 27, 2026 at 15:34 UTC.
This is a perspective projection of data collected by PACE / OCI on April 12, 2026 shows the tans and greens of North America covered by white clouds and some snow in the upper left half of the image along the horizon. In the foreground (lower right), gaps in the white cloud cover reveal the blue of the Atlantic Ocean with green and turquoise ribbons of phytoplankton blooms as well as some shallow banks such as those around The Bahamas and Bermuda.
White icebergs and green sea ice float beneath the cloud cover at the northern edge of the Ross Sea. This Landsat 9 / OLI-2 image was collected on March 9, 2026 at 19:29 UTC.
A view of the southeastern United States from about 2550 kilometers above the western Caribbean. White cloud streets frame the coastline. The image was created from data collected by Suomi-NPP/VIIRS on February 1, 2026.
White icebergs and sea ice fill the lower left corner of the image while lines of white clouds and their dark shadows stretch towards the upper right. The rest of the image is filled with the blue, green, yellowish, and reddish swirls of the Ross Sea and the phytoplankton blooms it contains. The bloom colors have been enhanced to make them more visible. These data were collected by Landsat 8 / OLI on January 25, 2026 at 20:38 UTC.
Green and turquoise swirls in the blue ocean south of green and tan Cape St. Francis, South Africa indicate the presence of phytoplankton blooms. Sun glint highlights both surface swells (tiny linear repeating patterns having mostly the same orientation) and internal waves (larger, more widely spaced criss-crossing patterns). Several large ships and their wakes also traverse the ocean pixels. This image was collected by Landsat 8 / OLI on January 24, 2026 at 8:11 UTC.
The tan desert landscape of Oman in the upper left (northwest) corner of the image contrasts with the blue of the Arabian Sea and white clouds in the rest of the image. Many ribbons of green (likely slicks of the mixotrophic dinoflagellate, Noctiluca scintillans) highlight convergence zones in this turbulent region of the northern Indian Ocean. PACE/OCI data collected on 19 January 2026
The blue waters of the Black Sea painted with turquoise swirls of suspended sediment and phytoplankton meet the green Georgia coastline on the right surrounded by white, snow-covered Caucasus Mountains. A smoke plume drifts westward across the sea. This Landsat 9/OLI-2 image was collected on January 7, 2026.
View of coastal Montenegro and Albania collected on 1 January 2026 by Landsat 8/OLI
Eddies and ribbons of cyanobacteria blooms paint the otherwise blue waters of the southwestern Baltic Sea. The land on the left (west) is Denmark; along the top right lies Sweden; the peninsula protruding into the bottom center belongs to Germany. This scene was collected by Landsat 8 on August 18, 2025 at 10:08 UTC.
Landsat 8 image of Scoresby Sound in Greenland collected on July 6, 2025 at 13:39 UTC. White icecaps rest atop rugged red, green, and buff mountains while striated off-white glaciers flow towards the blue and cyan fjords of the sound. White icebergs speckle the blue water's surface. Brownish suspended sediments emerge from the coastline at a couple of the valley mouths.
A late instar nymph of Lycorma delicatula sits atop a young Echinacea purpurea flower. The nymph has black legs with white spots and a red and black carapace with white spots. The flower is green and yellow with hints of red.
A view of Earth composed of 9 orbits' worth of PACE/OCI data collected on May 31, 2025. The tans and greens of North America fill the upper left portion of the pictured globe. Northern South America is at the bottom. The tan Sahara occupies the right edge separated from greenish Europe in the upper right by the blue Mediterranean Sea. Bluish-white Greenland lies near the top of the globe. Tan-colored smoke from Canadian wildfires has drifted north, south, and eastward across the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time tan-colored dust has drifted westward across the Atlantic farther south (near the bottom of the image). Turquoise and green swirls of phytoplankton blooms can be seen around Iceland and in the North and Black Seas. The thinning ice of Canada's Northwest Passage stands out as a light blue band in the upper left. White clouds form myriad patterns over ice, land, and water.
Colorful photos of plants and animals in and near Bowie, Maryland arranged in such a way as to spell out "MARYLAND NATIVE" against a black background. The following species are represented. Anaxyrus americanus Aquilegia canadensis Aronia melanocarpa Baptisia australis Camponotus chromaiodes Chelone glabra Chelone obliqua Chlosyne nycteis Diogmites neoternatus Epargyreus clareus Eurybia divaricata Impatiens capensis Juglans nigra Kalmia latifolia Lindera benzoin Lobelia siphilitica Lonicera sempervirens Misumessus oblongus Nerodia sipedon Pisaurina mira Poecile carolinensis Quercus alba Salvia lyrata Scolia dubia Sisyrinchium angustifolium Sphex nudus Spigelia marylandica Symphotrichum laeve Terrapene carolina Zelus luridus
Clockwise from top: Bleeding heart Fleabane Golden Alexander Wild geranium Golden ragwort Green and Gold Center: Moss phlox
An oblique view of mostly cloud-free western Europe shows phytoplankton blooms in the waters around the British Isles. Land surfaces are various shades of green and brown with some white snow-covered mountains. Atlantic Ocean and North and Baltic Sea waters have mostly, blue, green, and aquamarine hues. Surrounding clouds are white. The source data for the image were collected during four orbits of the Aqua / MODIS instrument on April 7, 2025.
Opening Fagus grandifolia bud: The brown sheath has split revealing fuzzy light green buds inside.
Brown, tan, and green hues streak Lake Pontchartrain north of grayish New Orleans. The brown Mississippi River meanders through the bottom left quadrant of the scene. The connection to the Gulf of Mexico appears at the right side of the image. Lake Maurepas looks orangish-brown just to the left (west) of Lake Pontchartrain. Landsat 8 scene collected at 16:31 UTC on 22 March 2025
Man near the Washington Monument wearing blue jeans and a blue Patagonia raincoat holds a protest sign with an image of Greenland.
The data for this image of the North Pacific Ocean were collected over several orbits of the PACE/OCI instrument on February 26 (eastern half) and 27 (western half), 2025. The characteristic comma shapes of three extratropical cyclones are visible in the northern half of this image. The predominant colors in the image are blue (the ocean) and white (the clouds and ice).
Landsat 8 montage of the coastal region near the mouth of China's Yellow River. The data making up the image were collected on February 24, 2025 at 2:42 UTC. Geometric shapes (mostly rectangles) tessellate the five panels of this image. Most of the shapes are green, blue, tan, or brown. Many are aquaculture ponds.
Surface slicks of green phytoplankton (most likely Noctiluca scintillans) trace out the spiral arms of a cyclonic eddy in the Gulf of Oman to the northeast of Muscat. Ships and their wakes can be seen cutting through the surface slicks. The data for this image were collected by Landsat 8/OLI on March 8, 2025 at 06:28 UTC
Green tendrils fill the blue water of the northern Arabian Sea. Tan deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa appear on the left (west) while the tans and greens of India and Pakistan appear on the right (east). The green tendrils in the water likely indicate the presence of the mixotrophic dinoflagellate, Noctiluca scintillans. White clouds stretch across the top and bottom of the image. This image comprises data collected by PACE/OCI on February 17, 2025.
The tans, browns, and greens of southern Africa divide the green and turquoise waters of the Benguela current system along the Atlantic coast from the more pure blue waters of the Agulhas Current along the Indian-Ocean coast. Data for this image were collected by PACE/OCI on January 18, 2025.
Green and turquoise swirls of phytoplankton decorate the blue water of the Ross Sea. White spots are icebergs entrained in the local current field. Image captured by Landsat 9 on January 18, 2025 (UTC)
Andrew and Margarete Kuring
The counterclockwise spiral of a low-pressure system covers the northeastern United States, but the entire southern border and much of Mexico is cloudfree exposing blue and green offshore waters. PACE/OCI imagery collected on November 21, 2024
PACE/OCI image showing phytoplankton blooming to the east of Argentina on November 30, 2024. Many shades of green, cyan, and blue in ribbons and swirls indicate different algal communities.
Clockwise from upper left: Strymon melinus Eremnophila aureonotata Euchaetes egle Diogmites neoternatus Misumessus oblongus Morrisonia confusa
Northern Gulf of Suez Landsat 9 2024-11-22 08:18 UTC