Looking like a ginkgo leaf, the life-sustaining Nile River winds south through Egypt in a satellite picture created from images taken between July 9 and 15, 2012.
The white dots are the urbanized areas of northern Egypt. (Explore an interactive of the green maps.)
The Mississippi River and its many tributaries—seen in lighter green—empty into the Gulf of Mexico in a picture made from satellite images taken between March 25 and 31 of this year.
Forty percent of the salt marsh in the continental United States are located where these two water bodies meet.
The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers create a fertile crescent through central Iraq in an image created from pictures taken between November 12 to 18, 2012.
Though clouds can often obscure satellite images, there's usually enough clear sky over the course of the week to get the shot, according to the NOAA website.
Farmland straddles the Platte River (center) in the U.S. Midwest state of Nebraska in an image from pictures taken between July 22 to 28, 2012.
This region produces around 40 percent of the annual corn yield for the U.S., according to NOAA.
The Rocky, Cascade, and Coast mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwest seem to resemble parts of the human brain in an image taken from June 11 to 17, 2012.
White areas depict higher, less vegetated elevations. Potato fields and other agriculture can be seen in the bottom center of the image as the Rockies give way to the plains of Idaho.