Peter Wampler, a geologist at Grand Valley State University who has worked on water projects in Haiti, points out another obvious change: the amount of sediment coursing out of the rivers and streams. The New York Times reported that more than 90 percent of buildings in the town were damaged or destroyed. This seaport town of 86,000 people was among the densely populated areas hit hard by Matthew. The top image pair shows a detailed view of Les Cayes, on the southwest coast of Haiti’s Tiburon Peninsula. “When I look at these images, I see what seems to be seriously denuded hillsides, which I assume are from crops and fallows being washed away.”

“Generally in Haiti land is managed in very small patches, with a household having subsistence crops in a number of locations, often on steep slopes,” she said. Her work was focused closer to the border with the Dominican Republic, but she notes that steep slopes covered with vegetation and farms are the common topography across much of Haiti. Alexandra Morel, an ecosystem scientist at the University of Oxford, previously studied the vulnerability of the Haitian people and their environment. One of the most obvious changes is vegetation loss. The second, browner image shows the same area on October 12, 2016, eight days after Matthew made landfall as a category-4 storm. In each pair, the greener image shows the area on September 26, 2016, a week before the storm. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured these images of Haiti. The scope of the destruction on the Caribbean island nation is so dramatic it can be seen from space. A week after Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti, the death toll had climbed to 1,000 people, and United Nations agencies struggled to bring aid to devastated communities.

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