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Icebreaker Louis Saint Laurent in Resolute Bay, Nunavut Territory, Canada.
Worker resting on bales of cotton, Thonakaha, Korhogo, Ivory Coast. Cotton crops
occupy approximately 335,000 square klilometers worldwide, and use nearly one
quarter of all pesticides sold
Sand dune in the heart of vegetation on Fraser island, Queensland, Australia.
Fraser Island, named after Eliza Fraser, who was shipwrecked on the island in
1836, is the world's largest sand island. On top of this rather infertile
substratum, a humid tropical forest has developed in the midst of which wide
dunes intrude, moving with the wind. Fraser Island has important water
resources, including nearly 200 freshwater dune lakes, and has varied fauna such
as marsupials, birds, and reptiles. Welcoming 200,000 visitors a year without
damaging the local fauna and flora is a real challenge to sustainable
development on the island, which was declared a World Heritage site by Unesco in
1992.
The Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix basilica in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast. In 1983,
Yamoussoukro replaced Abidjan as the official capital of Ivory Coast. President
Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who died in 1993, made his native village into a modern
city with a grid of wide avenues - which are almost deserted - and every modern
facility: international airport, luxury hotels, golf course, prestigious
universities, and so forth. Yamoussoukro also boasts the world's biggest
basilica, Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix (Our Lady of Peace), consecrated by Pope John
Paul II in 1990. The former president, who donated this building to the Vatican,
insisted that he had financed the basilica's cost out of his own personal
fortune. This building was seen as a colossal waste by many Ivorians. It was
highly controversial in a country that lacks schools and hospitals and has only
nine doctors for every 100,000 inhabitants (compared to 413 in Norway)
Flock of sheep, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. After the missionary period,
between gold fever and the first drillings for oil, sheep-raising became the
chief activity in the north of the main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego.
The local cabanas (sheep pastures) are huge sheep farms with 3.5 acres of land
per head of livestock.
Tree of life", Tsavo national park, Kenya. This acacia is a symbol of life in
the vast expanses of thorny savanna, where wild animals come to take advantage
of its leaves or its shade. Tsavo National Park in southeastern Kenya, crossed
by the Nairobi-Mombasa road and railway axis, is the country's largest protected
area (8,200 square miles, or 21,000 square kilometers) and was declared a
national park in 1948
Elephants in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The Okavango Delta is the world's
largest inland delta, flooding seasonally, and is populated by five ethnic
groups of people, sharing it with hundreds of species of animals.
Iraqi tank graveyard in the desert near Al Jahrah, Kuwait. This graveyard of
tanks will bear witness for many years to the damage that war causes both to the
environment and to human health. In 1991, during the first Gulf War, a million
depleted uranium shells were fired at Iraqi forces, spreading toxic, radioactive
dust for miles around. Such dust is known to have lasting effects on the
environment and to cause various forms of cancer and other serious illnesses
among humans.
Village in the Rheris Valley, Er Rachidia region, High Atlas Mountains, Morocco.
Fortified villages are frequently seen along the valley of the Rheris, as they
are on most rivers of southern Morocco, inspired by the Berber architecture
built to protect against invaders. Today, with the threat of raids now gone, the
close clustering of dwellings, small windows, and roofs covering houses and
narrow streets serve the purpose of protecting occupants from heat and dust. The
flat, connecting roofs also provide a place for drying crops.
The Athabasca Oil Sands, Alberta, Canada. These oil deposits make up the largest
reservoir of crude bitumen in the world, and as recently as 2006, produced over
1 million barrels of crude oil per day.
Road interrupted by a sand dune, Nile Valley, Egypt. Dunes cover nearly
one-third of the Sahara, and the highest, in linear form, can attain a height of
almost 1,000 feet (300 m). Barchans are mobile, crescent-shaped dunes that move
in the direction of the prevailing wind at rates as high as 33 feet (10 m) per
year, sometimes even covering infrastructures such as this road in the Nile
Valley
Tea cultivation in Corrientes province, Argentina. The fertility of the red soil
and the regular rains of the Corrientes region create the ideal conditions for
the cultivation of tea. In an effort to protect the soil against erosion, tea is
planted along curved terraces and protected from the wind by hedges. Unlike
Asian and African countries, where the young sprouts are handpicked, in
Argentina mechanical harvesting is the rule, done mainly with high-clearance
tractors that are driven along the straight rows of tea bushes.
Icebergs and an Adelie penguin, Adelie Land, Antarctica. Antarctica, the sixth
continent, is a unique observation point for atmospheric and climatic phenomena;
its ancient ice, which trapped air when it was formed, contains evidence of the
Earth's climate as it has changed and developed over the past millions of years.
American cemetery north of Verdun, Meuse, France. Covering some 40 hectares (100
acres) at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Verdun, the
American cemetery was dedicated in 1935 by the American Battle Monuments
Commission. The commission was created in 1923 at the request of General
Pershing, who had taken part in the American offensive of 1918. Its aim was to
undertake architectural and landscape studies in order to restructure American
cemeteries and commemorative monuments in Europe. Whereas the French army chose
to build permanent cemeteries where temporary cemeteries had been made during
the hostilities, the American army opted to create a single cemetery. Some
25,000 American tombs scattered around Verdun were then brought together at
Romagne where, after almost half the bodies were repatriated to American soil,
14,246 soldiers have lain ever since.
Islet in the Sulu Archipelago, Philippines. More than 6,000 of the 7,100
Philippine Islands are uninhabited, like this islet in the Sulu Archipelago, a
set of 500 islands that separate the Celebes and the Sulu seas. Their
extraordinary biodiversity is under threat, not from distant industrial sites
but from the effects of global pollution. These islands, which barely rise above
the surface of the water, are among the first potential victims of global
warming and are certain to disappear when the sea level rises.
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