Fucino Plain seen from space
A lake turned into a farmland
Crops surging out of nowhere in Italy come summer : meet the Fucino plain, an atypical 13,000-ha basin nestled in the Abruzzo region.
Once the third biggest lake in the country, with 59 km in circumference and 30-m deep Fucino Lake was drained in the 1870s, unveiling a fertile land where cereals and vegetable have been thriving ever since. Cereals, potatoes, carrot, radishes, sugar beets, grapes and other fruit are grown on this almost perfect mosaic of a farmland divided into 1-ha fields.
But looking around you’ll also find the Fucino Space Center, the world’s biggest teleport for civilian use, operating the European Union’s Galileo Global Positioning System (GPS), can you spot it ?
Nimbo Earth Online with modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021-2022)