Satellite images show a changed landscape

Satellite images showed that coastal areas of Fukushima Prefecture were drastically transformed as a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Thursday released the results of an emergency observation by the Advanced Land Observing Satellite Daichi. In an image taken in February, the coastal area of Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, showed an orderly mosaic of farmland. However, the image taken on March 14 of the same area showed large tracts of land washed inland by the tsunami that hit the region after the earthquake. The Daichi images show mountains and forested areas in red and the ocean in blue. "The tsunami flooded coastal areas up to 3 kilometers inland," said Kenji Satake, a seismology professor who heads the Earthquake and Volcano Information Center at the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute. "The fact that seawater still remained three days after the earthquake likely means the Earth's surface sank. Observations of crustal movement also show that the coastal areas of Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures sank by a maximum of 75 centimeters."