Narrow, rectangular farm plots with historic roots spread across the landscape near Warta.
Farm fields of varying shapes and sizes cover many rural areas of Europe. The very narrow, rectangular plots in this photograph caught the eye of an astronaut as the International Space Station passed over west-central Poland. A tributary of the Oder River, the Warta River flows past the town of the same name. (Note that north is to the right in this photo.)
Damming of the Warta River in the 1980s created one of the largest reservoirs in the Lodz region of Poland. The dam was intended for agricultural irrigation, recreation, and for flood mitigation in the Warta River Valley. The upper end of the reservoir appears in the lower right of the image.
The rural town of Warta, an agricultural community established in the mid-1200s, is home to many small, privately owned farms that mostly produce grains. Research suggests that there are old historical roots for those long and thin agricultural sections.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
