The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Australia’s southwestern corner in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, seen here in June 2026.
Zoom in or click on the circles to explore this image at its full resolution.
Goldfields–Esperance is the largest of Western Australia’s regions. The soils are generally quite saline and the climate is mostly hot and dry with typically low annual rainfall, except for the small wetter area around the town of Esperance pictured here.
The colours in this image are created by processing the image including Sentinel-2’s near-infrared channel, which highlights vegetation in red and helps to reveal different information compared to a natural colour image.
Agricultural fields create a colourful patchwork of geometric shapes dominating the lower-left part of the image. The colours range from red to brown, allowing for better discrimination between different types of vegetation. This feature is therefore helpful when Sentinel-2 data are used in agricultural monitoring for mapping and classifying land use, crop type, crop health, change detection, irrigated landscape mapping and crop area mapping.
The islands forming the Recherche Archipelago can also be easily spotted off the coast as red dots scattered in the dark Southern Ocean water. Also known as the Bay of Isles, this area spans 230 km and is a protected nature reserve, famous for its clear turquoise waters and rich marine life.
Several salt lakes of different sizes are visible across the image in colours ranging from blue to green, depending on their salinity and water depth. The largest seen here is Lake Dundas, lying north of the fields, just west of the white cloud front. This salt-encrusted lake has a highly irregular outline with islands speckling its greenish waters.
The coastline of Western Australia is also dotted with multiple salt lakes, including Lake Warden and Pink Lake – the two blueish water bodies next to each other near the centre of the image.
Pink Lake, the white and azure basin on the left, was famous for the pink hue of its water owing to a mix of high salt concentrations and algae thriving on the salt. Today, changes in salinity have caused the lake to lose its iconic colour. Lake Warden is a protected nature reserve recognised as a Ramsar wetland system of international importance. Despite being very salty, the lake basin offers a habitat for thousands of species of waterbird.
The town of Esperance, which also gives its name to the region, can be seen on the bay 3 km east of Pink Lake. Surrounded by five major national parks, Esperance is home to stunning white sand beaches and is the only port in the southeast of Western Australia.