Autumnal Colors in the Ridge and Valley Province

Autumnal foliage colors the hills of the Ridge and Valley (or Valley and Ridge) Province of the Appalachians in this reflectance image from the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) dataset. The image was acquired by the Multi Spectral Instrument (MSI) aboard the Sentinel-2B platform on October 24, 2026. The region is characterized by long, even ridges with long, continuous valleys between them.

Swipe the center bar left and right in this pairing to see the difference in vegetation color between October 8 (left) and October 24, 2026 (right). NASA Earth Observatory recently published detailed Landsat images of the area to the upper right, near Williamsport, known as the "Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania."

The novel view of the Ridge and Valley Appalachians on the left—from October 21, 2026—shows a radiometric terrain corrected (RTC) image from the OPERA collection of datasets that highlights the structure of the ridges and valleys. It also captures the presence of vegetation on the ridges, and urban and cultivated areas in the valleys.

The false-color RGB visualization combines both co-polarized VV (vertical transmit vertical receive) or HH (horizontal transmit horizontal receive) backscatter values (red and blue) with cross-polarized VH or HV values (green) to generate a color image from SAR data. In this false-color scale, vegetated areas appear green; urban and/or sparsely vegetated areas appear white/pink; calm water, dry sand, and frozen ground appear black; and rough water appears purple or magenta. 

The science team behind NASA's PACE mission has started using that satellite's data to detect fall color changes, particularly reds, in more wavelengths.

Visit Worldview to visualize near real-time imagery and historical imagery from NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS); find more imagery in our Worldview weekly image archive.