LANDSAT SATELLITE: CACHI AREA, PROVINCE OF SALTA, ARGENTINA
Unlike most of the presented Landsat images in this site, this image shows a mainly barren but beautiful landscape to us. This is the zone of Cachi, Salta, Argentina (in the center of the image) and the of Calchaquíes valleys surrondings. This point, located in the Argentine Andes, is a recognized site of archaeological interest, since there has been great amount of most interesting rock engravings of ancient data. It can be appraised in addition, that in spite of the dryness of this zone, the narrow but fertile valleys of the rivers Cachi and Calchaquí allow the practice of agriculture, as they come it doing from centuries. This is a common characteristic of the pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Those places in which defrostings of the Andes generated narrow rivers with fertile valleys, became propitious zones for the development of cultures. This Landsat natural color image, combination RGB bands 3-2-1, shows to us in addition (partly the botom right of the image), a gorge whose polichromy is of extreme beauty. It can be appraised there, in that "cut" in mountains, the different geologic layers characterized by the varied colors that the different mineral accumulation has given them through the course of millenia. As it can be seen, here we have another application of the Landsat images: geology. Surely, an expert geologist could reach many more conclusions of that we can extract showing an image of these characteristics.
