See hi-res version here: patreon.com/posts/26813196

To be fair, I figured out the number of workers on my own XD, but the dog food/coffee mix up took me a good hot second to realize the mistake. I was tired >u<;;

Swirling sediment

Green and brown sediment swirls trough the North Sea on this true color image taken on the 18th of December 2004. The outburst of these green sediments are due to river outlets on the English coast (the Humber and Thames) as well as the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt on the Dutch coast.

What also can be observed is the invisibility and shallowness of the ‘IJsselmeer’, a Dutch the lake on the northeastern corner of the image. Until 1932 this lake was actually a sea called the ‘Zuiderzee’. Continued flooding of the lake due to severe storms prompted the constructing of a major hydraulic engineering project by the name of ‘afsluitdijk’ which literally translates as closing dike. This lake is on average only about 5-6 meters deep.

Eventually, parts of the lake were drained using pumps and a whole new province called ‘Flevoland’ came into being. It lies around 5 meters below sea level. Drainage was started in 1957 and in the 1985 the province was founded. The area was mainly use for agriculture, but now serves as a major urban agglomeration of Amsterdam and other neighboring cities.

--BO

Image: NASA Visible Earth.

References: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=69721