NASA: Yangtze River – May 2001, Bottom – March 2003

What do you get when you take 600km of river, US$100 billion, 27 million cubic meters of concrete, 14 million people displaced, environmental devastation… just some of the facts about the world’s largest hydropower plant, the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Even though it’s not yet fully functional, the impact of the project is already apparent from space and truly an engineering marvel, if ethically and technically questionable. It’s a big price for a system which will only provide 3% of China’s power needs.