Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i National Geographic Magazine

YEAR AFTER YEAR, as autumn in Alaska is ending, Ryota Kajita goes looking for winter’s first ice. A Japanese-born photographer living in Fairbanks, Kajita believes that “everything—even if it appears to be insignificant—connects to larger aspects of our Earth.” An example, he says, is the ice, after it has frozen over ponds and lakes but before it’s been obscured by snow. Kajita has been shooting photos through the ice since 2010 for his project, Ice Formations. He’s captivated by the geometric patterns he sees: fizzy fields of bubbles under the frozen surface, and snow and ice crystals dusted across it. Many photos are compositions of trapped, frozen bubbles of methane and carbon dioxide. Though Kajita loves to photograph the formations, their existence worries him. As Earth’s northern regions warm, the…

ANGELINA HESSE, a Dutch-American lab assistant and cook, suggested in the 1880s that an ingredient in jellies and puddings could be used to grow bacteria. By finding that purpose for agar, Hesse revolutionized microbiology and set the stage for a new art form. In the laboratory, agar—a gelatinous substance isolated from seaweed—is mixed with other nutrients and water, heated to sterilize, and poured into shallow dishes. When cooled, it thickens into a smooth, semisolid surface for bacteria to grow on—an upgrade from the potatoes, meat extract, and bread scientists were previously using. More than a century after Hesse’s work, agar is still at the center of bacterial cultivation. It has also become an unconventional canvas for show-casing microscopic organisms in all their visual brilliance. Some microbes create color naturally. Different…

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I was offered a last-minute assignment to photograph the Yukon Quest, a thousand-mile sled dog race through the subarctic wilderness of Alaska and Canada. The race takes place in the dead of winter along a route that was used by sled dog teams during the gold rush to deliver mail and supplies. The Yukon Quest is considered one of the toughest sporting events on the planet: Temperatures frequently reach minus 50°F, winds can blow over 40 miles an hour, and the days are so short that most of the race happens in the dark. I did not know any of this before the assignment. I’d never heard of the Yukon Quest or its more famous counterpart in the United States, the Iditarod. When I thought of the…

Almost as soon as the honeybee colony was installed, it came under attack. Not from varroa mites, pesticides, colony collapse disorder, or any of the many other perils now facing honeybee populations across the world, but from hornets—each one a red-eyed giant next to the hairy little bees. Each strike took just an instant, the predators snatching bees out of the air and then flying away with their victims, which would be carved up later and fed to the hornets’ own ravenous larvae. One-on-one, a western honeybee is no match for a European hornet. Up to an inch and a half long, the hornet is equipped with powerful mandibles capable of shearing smaller insects to pieces. For those first few days of the siege, the honeybees appeared helpless in the…

WE FEEL BAD when we throw out things that shouldn’t have become trash (like uneaten, past-its-prime produce) or expend resources needlessly (like leaving lights on when we’re away). This guilty feeling is deeply ingrained; the origins of the expression “waste not, want not” can be traced to the 1500s. But we do waste, in ways big and small. The result is this shocking fact: Of the minerals, fossil fuels, foodstuffs, and other raw materials that we take from the Earth and turn into products, about two-thirds ends up as waste. And, more likely than not, that waste is part of a larger environmental problem. “Plastic trash drifted into rivers and oceans; so did nitrates and phosphates leaching from fertilized fields. A third of all food rotted, even as the Amazon…

THOUSANDS OF VISITORS speed daily along Interstate 70 between the soaring cliffs of Colorado National Monument and the fantastical sandstone of Utah’s Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Compared with those marquee destinations, the borderland between them—an open range of cinnamon-colored sand and scraggly juniper—seems barren and anonymous. But out of sight, a backcountry mountain bike path, Kokopelli’s Trail, takes in 142 miles of slot canyons, bluffs, and desert mesas as formidable and astonishing as anything in the parks. “It’s big, wild country,” says Chris Muhr, vice president of the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association, the group that has stewarded the Kokopelli since its 1989 completion. “When the guys first talked about biking out there, it seemed crazy. But it’s land that’s hard to resist.” It’s also land that’s highly…

PATIENCE BULUS AND ESTHER JOSHUA HELD HANDS AS THEY WERE MARCHED OUT OF THEIR DORM ROOM AT GUNPOINT THAT APRIL NIGHT. Herded into the back of an open-bed truck, they lost their grip on each other. Amid the mass of frightened students, Patience heard Esther’s soft voice ask, “What will happen?” Then someone jumped off the side. Suddenly other girls were tumbling into the darkness, willing to risk being shot or lost in the unknown forest to flee their captors. Patience looked next to her, but Esther had been pulled deeper into the truck. Patience pushed her way to the edge and jumped without Esther. For five years a rebel insurgency in northeastern Nigeria had terrorized the region and shut down schools. The Government Secondary School for girls in Chibok…

Ella Al-Shamahi PALEOANTHROPOLOGIST Marion Stirling Pugh ARCHAEOLOGIST Women: A Century of Change A YEARLONG SERIES BE SURE YOU’RE THE FIRST woman somewhere,” an editor advised budding photographer Dickey Chapelle as World War II escalated. Chapelle took the advice and sneaked ashore with a Marine unit during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, flouting a ban on female journalists in combat zones. She temporarily lost her military press accreditation but went on to earn a reputation as a fearless war correspondent. Since National Geographic’s founding in 1888, women have churned out achievements in science and exploration, often with only fleeting recognition. They mapped the ocean floor, conquered the highest peaks, unearthed ancient civilizations, set deep-sea diving records, and flew around the world. They talked their way onto wars’ front lines and…

The photographer sees intriguing designs—and concerning markers of climate change—frozen into the ice in Alaska’s interior.…

ANY GEODE MIGHT MAKE US WONDER: What geologic forces form these hollows lined with crystals? But the Pulpí Geode, discovered in an abandoned Spanish mine, takes wonder to a different scale. One of the world’s largest geodes, it’s an approximately 390-cubic-foot cavity whose walls bristle with imposing gypsum crystals, some nearly seven feet long. Now scientists are hoping to uncover how these colossal crystals developed. They seem to have been made by a very specific recipe: a 250-million-year-old supply of the mineral anhydrite, a climate hospitable to crystal formation, and lots of water and time. In the resulting chemical soup, larger crystals may have cannibalized smaller ones to boost their own size, while swings in the local temperature could have accelerated the crystal growth even further. Though key chapters remain…

JEFF GOLDBLUM crackles with curiosity. Eyes wide, posture keen, mouth agape, hand gestures expectant. It’s a quality he’s leased to an array of wide-eyed, reactor-brained characters in films such as Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and The Fly. Now the Penn-sylvania-born actor and musician—a man of 67 who, by his own admission, is “still four years old in many respects”—is unleashing his eccentric brand of curiosity in a new show for National Geographic and Disney+. He explores a suite of subjects: Politics, disease, and crime are out; bikes, pools, and tattoos are in. It’s The World According to Jeff Goldblum. Your subjects—denim, gaming, ice cream, barbecue—seem quite disparate but universal. Why these? They’re eclectic, a mélange, a potpourri, a shepherd’s pie, with many surprises. I’d recently hosted three episodes of a…

IN AMSTERDAM I met a man who revealed to me the hidden currents of our lives—the massive flows of raw materials and products deployed, to such wonderful and damaging effect, by 7.7 billion humans. Our shared metabolism, you might say. It was a crisp fall morning, and I was sitting in a magnificent old brick pile on the Oosterpark, a palace of curved corridors and grand staircases and useless turrets. A century ago, when the Dutch were still extracting coffee, oil, and rubber from their colony in Indonesia, this building had been erected as a colonial research institute. Now it houses assorted do-gooder organizations. The one Marc de Wit works for is called Circle Economy, and it’s part of a buzzing international movement that aims to reform how we’ve done…

The monkeys wore soccer uniforms. Six Japanese macaques standing erect on leashes obediently kicked the ball up and down the turf as their human trainers and a crowd of spectators cheered them on in a mock Japan-versus-Brazil match. The monkeys in blue jerseys (Japan) looked sturdier, with fat tails sticking through the holes cut in their pants, but Brazil’s yellow lineup was quick—especially when player 10 stopped licking its hands. Suddenly, 10 got the ball, kicked, and scored. Victory! Japan’s team bowed. And the crowd exploded in laughter. This was just one of the warm-up acts to the main event in the indoor amphitheater at Japan’s Nikko Saru Gundan, a roadside attraction off Route 121 in Nikko City. Wandering around the courtyard, I saw a macaque in diapers and an…

WHO A photojournalist based in Australia, Skovranova specializes in stories of humans and the environment. WHERE Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve near Sydney, Australia WHAT Taken with an Olympus E-M5 Mark II and 9-18mm lens in an underwater housing There can be magic in photographing women. Skovranova, who contributes to the @natgeo Instagram account, says she is enchanted by the combination of strength, playfulness, and camaraderie she sees in women; it’s a chemistry that often yields warm and inspiring photos. An environmental photographer specializing in underwater scenes who likes to free dive—that is, hold her breath rather than use a breathing apparatus—Skovranova was swimming one day off Sydney’s Shelly Beach. She watched a group of young women dive gleefully under the waves, laughing and cavorting together. “I feel like this…