Over the last two-and-a-half decades, a series of NASA’s Landsat satellites have captured these pictures of the growing agriculture industry in the northern reaches of the Syrian Desert in Saudi Arabia, not far from Jordan. Farmers use a technique called center-pivot irrigation to bring up water from below the desert floor to grow wheat and other crops. Hydrologists estimate that the underground water reserves will be economically viable for about 50 years. The area receives about one inch of rainfall annually.
