Image Story | Beaver-Colored Waters in Canada: Landsat 9 Captures a Natural Tableau in Robert Bay
From space, the waters at the southern end of James Bay in Canada look like a painting in shades of brown, blue and green. The image, selected by NASA as its Image of the Day on October 6, 2026, was captured by the Landsat 9 satellite on September 27 and reveals how dark river waters mix with sediment and dissolved organic matter in Hannah and Robert bays.
Why did the water turn brown?
NASA Earth Observatory explains that the Moose, Nottaway and Harricana rivers flow through the boreal forests and wetlands of Quebec and Ontario, carrying colored dissolved organic matter with them. These substances absorb parts of the blue and ultraviolet light, giving the water brown shades resembling the color of tea.
Some of these substances consist of compounds produced by the decomposition of leaves, roots, bark and soil. When the river waters reach the shallow bays, they also mix with fine sediments stirred up by tides and currents, appearing in the satellite image as pale brown clouds intermingling with the dark blue waters.
An image captured by Landsat 9
The OLI-2 instrument aboard Landsat 9 captured the scene on September 27, 2026. The image shows Charlton Island and Stag Rock near the coast, along with branching green patterns on land associated with differences in moisture and vegetation density.
NASA notes that the region’s extensive mudflats are linked to the shallow, gently sloping floor of the bay, while the rivers continue to deposit mud and fine sediment. The area has also experienced a slow uplift of the land since the retreat of ancient ice sheets.
A name inspired by the color of the beaver
NASA also connects the scene to the region’s history and culture. A word from the Southeastern Cree language is used to describe a color resembling a burnt beaver, a description that suits the distinctive brown shades of the water. Beavers have long featured in the history and legends of Cree communities that have lived in the region for thousands of years, and Robert Bay later became associated with the history of the fur trade.
In this way, the image brings geography, chemistry, the environment and human history together in a single frame: rivers carrying traces of forests and wetlands into the bay, sediments moved by the water, and a landscape whose full extent can be seen in this way only from orbit.
Image and information source
Source: NASA Earth Observatory. The image was prepared by Lauren Dauphin using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Original story: Adam Voiland, published October 6, 2026.
