The Forested Floodplains of Congaree National Park

NASA Science reports that the OLI sensor on Landsat nine captured a vivid image of the Congaree River winding through the floodplain forests of South Carolina’s Congaree National Park on August eighteenth, twenty twenty‑five. The park, where about eighty percent lies within the river’s floodplain, protects one of the nation’s largest remnants of old‑growth bottomland hardwood forest, with features like oxbow lakes, point bars, and champion trees that thrive on nutrient‑rich silt deposited during seasonal floods. Over the decades, the landscape’s gentle rises and paleochannels have created distinct ecological zones that support flood‑tolerant cypress‑tupelo swamps. NASA Science notes that the public can view the full image and learn more through the Earth Observatory’s U.S. National Parks from Space collection.

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