Ever since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in the war in Ukraine, it has been on my to do list to create an animation of the environmental destruction caused by this, so when I found How to build a GIF of satellite imagery in R, I had to try it.

The dam was blown up the 6:th of June, 2023 and the animation covers June 5 – August 21.

library(dplyr)
library(purrr) 
library(magick)

# Set working directory
setwd("C:\\Eget\\R\\")

# Create gif animation
Kakhovka_gif <- list.files(path = "C:\\Eget\\R\\Indata\\Ukraine", pattern = "*.jpg", full.names = T) %>% 
  map(image_read) %>% 
  image_join() %>% 
  image_annotate("Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam: June 2023 - August 2023", location = "+10+10", size = 20, color = "white") %>%
  image_animate(fps=4) %>% 
  image_write("Kakhovka.gif") 

The resulting animation:

A few clouds, but it clearly shows the disastrous loss of water. At the end end of the animation, you can see that the dried up areas are getting greener from vegetation.

This method can be applied to a many events, such as flooding, drought, fires or volcano eruptions, so there will likely be related articles in the future.