Coastal Dunes, Sado Estuary, Portugal

A dominant dune

This overview, showing France's Great Dune of Pilat at low tide, is one of countless finely detailed images available in the Microsoft Planetary Computer. This vast, cloud-powered database lets scientists see a whole timeline of crisp satellite captures and environmental data for any location in the world. By analyzing this data, scientists can explore better ways to manage natural resources. For example, a scientist could match shots of Pilat year-over-year with historical wind and tidal data to show how and why the Great Dune has shifted over time.