Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul-14 i National Geographic Magazine

As Chris Johns takes on a new role as the National Geographic Society’s chief content officer, Susan Goldberg, the magazine’s former executive editor for news and features, becomes the 126-year-old publication’s tenth editor in chief—and the first woman to hold that position. We asked them both a few questions: Chris, what makes you proudest about your nine years as editor in chief? And Susan, what do you most look forward to as you take on the job? Chris Johns: I’m proud that we’ve been able to increase public awareness of important issues. We’ve been influential in helping the world deal with the illegal wildlife and ivory trades, climate change, child brides and other human rights issues. We’ve brought these global issues right into people’s living rooms. Susan Goldberg: I’ve been…

We asked readers to capture fleeting scenes from the world in motion. For future assignments, visit ngm.com/yourshot/assignments. EDITORS’ CHOICE Chris Schmid Monnaz, Switzerland During a trip to Brazil, Schmid wanted to see the country’s famously strong criollo horses. He knew that ranchers would drive a group of horses from one place to another, so he set up a camera with a remote trigger on a hill. Several horses came close to stepping on it, but none did. READERS’ CHOICE Alex Geifman Lod, Israel Every day for two months Geifman went to Israel’s Ben Shemen Forest to photograph the same pack of foxes. While he was sitting in his car one day, two foxes climbed a tree. Then one slipped. Geifman snapped several shots before the fox fell.…

Agriculture is getting a high- tech makeover. Farmers are increasingly using GPS-equipped machinery supported by computers that organize sophisticated data on plants, soil, and weather. Termed “precision agriculture,” this system helps them identify and manage variability within fields. David Schimmelpfennig of the USDA Economic Research Service says that farmers have always made informed choices but that access to more data expands their decision-making toolbox. Watch the video version of Food by the Numbers at nationalgeographic.com/foodbynumbers. THE HIGH-TECH FARM Precision-agriculture technologies allow farmers to gather and analyze data to optimize their land’s productivity. Most farmers begin by collecting data about their crop yields. HARVESTS Harvesting combines collect georeferenced data that reveal yield variations within each field. SOIL MAPS Farmers collect soil samples from different parts of each field, then create maps…

THE HUNT FOR ONE OF THE OLDEST QUESTIONS MAY BE ANSWERED IN OUR LIFETIMES. ARE WE ALONE? Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) inspect a probe like one that might someday travel beneath the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Europa’s frozen, fissured surface, seen here in a colorized mosaic image from the Galileo spacecraft, hides a liquid ocean that may hold all the ingredients needed for life. An electronic signal travels from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, to a robotic rover clinging to the underside of foot-thick ice on an Alaskan lake. The rover’s spotlight begins to glow. “It worked!” exclaims John Leichty, a young JPL engineer huddled in a tent on the lake ice nearby. It may not sound like a technological tour de force, but…

One of the first travelers in a century to walk through the Hejaz desert of Saudi Arabia, PAUL SALOPEK encounters a fabled past of caravans and pilgrims, of empires come and gone. A pre-Islamic people, Nabataeans carved palatial tombs at Madain Salih. As an armed guard keeps watch, Governor Mosaad Al-Saleem (at far right) entertains guests during a regatta near the Red Sea port city of Yanbu al Bahr, much of it built in the 1970s. THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF WELLS IN THE OLD HEJAZ. WE WALK TO THEM. Sometimes their water is sweet. More often it is salt. It matters little. These wells, which pock the long-disused caravan trails of Arabia, are monuments to human survival. Each concentrates a fine distillation of the landscape. And the same applies to…

Time Sensitive Intrigued by a forest of dead date palms, their trunks bent like ancient columns in the water-starved oasis of Yanbu an Nakhl, photographer John Stanmeyer reached into a pocket for his iPhone. He had an idea. On assignment in the Hejaz, in western Saudi Arabia, Stanmeyer often felt caught in a time warp. “It was as if I had one foot in the present, and the other had stepped back a hundred years.” To capture that sensation, Stanmeyer took photographs of the palms with an app called Hipstamatic; it uses software in this case to mimic the look of faded prints from a film camera. For the next month, in addition to his regular photography, he kept at his Hipstamatic experiments. The vintage-style images caught the feel, he…

I found a sad irony in your issue featuring the dystopian situation in Syria and the cosmic scale of black holes. Syria’s plight reflects the cruel reality at the heart of civilization. The toxic combination of religious and ethnic hatred, the inability to attain a civil society, and the failure to accept the primacy of science will lead to the creeping destruction of a culture that stretches to antiquity. On the other hand we are drawn to a dark specter of unimaginable power and distance until we fall into the final singularity. It makes our human condition, no matter how grand or pathetic, seem trivial. MICHAEL MAFFETT Lake Burton, Georgia Author Anne Barnard asserts of Syrian Jews that “most left after the founding of Israel, when the government began viewing…

In the world of tomorrow, charging your cell phone could be a breeze. Last year electrical engineers J-C Chiao and Smitha Rao, and their University of Texas at Arlington team, developed a prototype of a wind turbine—half the size of a grain of rice—that could be integrated into future electronics. Made from durable metal alloy and connected by tiny wires, it would deliver a tiny burst of energy to compact devices— think smartphones, not refrigerators—that need quick juice. It’s the latest mobiletechnology idea aimed at making power outlets obsolete. Solar backpacks that charge handheld devices already exist. Next up? A new generation of wearable energy sources could include solar-powered fabrics and wind-powered hats that restoke a phone battery. A wind turbine mounted on metal is dwarfed by a harvester ant.…

Alligator and calfskin are so last season. An edgier choice? Wearing invasive species. Conservation and raising awareness in the fashion industry are the goals, says New Orleans artist Cree McCree. Her clothing made from nutria—a South American rodent that’s been wreaking havoc in Louisiana wetlands for decades—has been featured in major runway shows. Paris-based designer Monika Jarosz has a cult following for her purses and wrist cuffs crafted from cane toad, a poisonous amphibian, also South American, introduced to Australia in the 1930s. Detractors argue that wearing invasive species isn’t more ethical than wearing other animals. For Jarosz and others, turning a pest into a product is a fashion-forward form of recycling. Wearable species on display: Burmese python–bone ring and earring, cane-toad cuff, wild boar–tooth necklace…

By 2050 we’ll need to feed two billion more people. This special eight-month series explores how we can do that—without overwhelming the planet. Can Africa’s fertile farmland feed the planet? Why big corporations are grabbing up land on the planet’s hungriest continent. Sugarcane hawkers await customers on the Nacala railway in northern Mozambique, where Brazil and Japan hope to turn 35 million acres of small farms over to industrial-scale soybean production. The country has leased roughly 7 percent of its arable land—among the highest rates in Africa. Though some corporate farms have pushed small growers off their land, Bananalandia, a 3,500-acre enterprise near Maputo, has improved life for the locals. The company provides jobs for 2,800 workers and has built roads, schools, and power lines. It’s also helped convert Mozambique…

If the goliath grouper loses its legal protection, will the 800-pounder sink or swim? Goliath groupers emerge from a blizzard of baitfish on a WWII shipwreck off Florida. Off the coast of southwest Florida, a hundred feet below the water’s surface, a whump rolls through the sea. Another whump follows, like the boom of distant fireworks. It’s coming from the carcass of a drowned ship. Packed into the crackedopen belly of the wreck are a dozen very big—and very audible—fish. These are Atlantic goliath groupers. They gather on shipwrecks and reefs to eat and socialize. At up to 800 pounds and nine feet long, they sport jutting jaws and giant palm fronds for fins and are mottled and spotted in earth tones. They announce their presence to encroaching creatures by…

Water Working Colored lights and dancing spray have put on a show for Chicagoans since 1927, when the Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain was dedicated in the city’s Grant Park. When nights are warm enough, up to 15,000 gallons of water a minute still leap from the tiers of the fountain’s 1.5-million-gallon basin. “A major display is given three evenings a week for a period of one hour during the summer months,” noted the caption for this photo —its color courtesy of the then new Finlay process—in the May 1931 Geographic. The fountain’s operation originally depended on two engineers who each worked 12-hour daily shifts. Computers took over in 1980. —Margaret G. Zackowitz Get Lost in Found. Go to NatGeoFound.tumblr.com.…

Brazil As a fast-moving storm engulfs Pedra da Gávea mountain, Caio Afeto seems to walk on clouds. The professional highliner was traversing two cliffs above Rio de Janeiro when a coastal front blew in, hiding the halfmile-high summit in mist. Russia Snared by a brown bear, a sockeye salmon spills a string of orange roe into Kuril Lake. Around a million of these fish swim from the Pacific Ocean to the Kam chatka Peninsula each summer to spawn— a boon to bears fattening up for winter hibernation. Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com. Papua New Guinea In Milne Bay schools of fish swirl around the coral-encrusted piles of a crumbling wharf. The warm waters—part of the biologically rich Coral Triangle marine area— are home to thousands…

Mangroves are on the march. In recent years scientists have observed the tangled trees growing farther north along Florida’s Atlantic coast, but it wasn’t until a team of U.S. researchers examined yearly satellite images that they realized the extent. From 1984 to 2011 mangrove forests doubled in size at the northern end of their Florida range. What’s enticing the mangroves north? Fewer cold snaps. These days temperatures rarely dip below 25°F, a vital threshold for the trees. “Small changes in temperature,” says researcher Kyle Cavanaugh, “can lead to landscape-scale changes in habitat.” Forest expansion Mangroves respond quickly to climatic changes. When an area becomes hospitable, farfloating seedlings soon take root.…

Six ceramic figurines were a puzzle when they came to light in a royal Maya tomb at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala in 2012. Now archaeologist Christa Schieber de Lavarreda and her team believe they have worked out the complex symbolism. “They’re like marionettes in a theater,” she says. One role was to accompany the king to the underworld in about 500 B.C. But they also played other parts. Four stood at the cardinal points, the corners of the Maya universe. Two others, positioned east and west, likely represented the daily cycle of the rising and setting sun. That symbol of constant rebirth may allude to the staple crop of corn sprouting anew every year—a nod to the king’s own mythical role as the corn god. ET CETERA Large ACID RAIN…

This isn’t a still life from 17th-century Europe. It’s fresh produce from four upscale markets in Manhattan. Eating locally and reducing carbon footprints may be in, but these fruits and vegetables made big trips to the Big Apple—in some cases covering nearly 9,000 miles. In fact, in the United States, produce imports have increased significantly since 1980. Amit Ratanshi, a seller at a Bronx distributor, says New York chefs and shoppers “want to know where their food is coming from.” That can mean a farm down the road, across the country, or—if it’s exotic goods—half a world away. Behind the Moveable Feast Big-city produce comes from near and far. Dartmouth geographer Susanne Freidberg says that’s nothing new. In the 19th century, before cold storage, New Yorkers got Christmas citrus from…

Explorers use a laser scanner to see China’s giant caverns as never before. Climber Emily Harrington takes the hard way up southern China’s Moon Hill, an arch from the remains of a collapsed cave. Sightseers have an easier option: a paved walkway to a viewpoint beneath the arch, then a dirt path to the top. The photographer’s lights illuminate the green-hued Getu He river in the Miao Room—considered the world’s second largest cave chamber by area. Opposite: Cedar Wright, Matt Segal, and Harrington ascend a limestone spire in Enshi canyon. The Stone Forest is a labyrinthine world of eroded and dissolved limestone near the southern Chinese city of Kunming. Early visitors gave the formations names like “rhinoceros admiring the moon” and “stone singing praises of plums.” Yangshuo was a sleepy…