"A new reservoir is filling in central China. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River—the world’s largest dam—was completed in 2006, and the river is filling up its valley behind the dam to form a narrow reservoir extending more than 600 kilometers. This image from April 15, 2009, is one of the first images that astronauts on the International Space Station have been able to capture of the flooding behind the dam. The main objective for the dam is to supply water for the largest hydroelectric plant in the world and to help control the devastating floods that plague the lowlands downstream from the dam."