Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i National Geographic Magazine

THE WATER IS COOL AGAINST MY SKIN, the silence absolute, and as I hover over the remains, I feel peaceful, thankful, a sense of coming home. Descend underwater with me—not too deep, maybe only 20 feet or so—and you’ll see about 30 other divers, paired in sets of two. They calmly float in place, despite strong currents off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, sketching images of coral-encrusted artifacts or taking measurements. For the first time, I am helping map the remains of a shipwreck. Most of the divers are African American. We’re training as underwater archaeology advocates, gaining the skills necessary to join expeditions and help document the wreckage of slave ships being found around the world, ships such as the São José Paquete d’Africa in South Africa, the…

Snowfall varies by region and is influenced by factors such as latitude, elevation, humidity, and proximity to oceans or lakes. Rising air temperatures boost humidity levels, and winter precipitation increasingly falls as rain instead of snow. Low-elevation and coastal areas are especially at risk of reduced snowfall. ERIC KNIGHT; MATTHEW TWOMBLY. SOURCES: CLAUDIA NOTARNICOLA, EURAC RESEARCH; NASA/JPL; NOAA; NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER TRACKING A CHANGING WINTER Snow-cover data from satellites are helping scientists record a worrying trend since 2000. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s mountain ranges are seeing both a significant decline in snow-covered area and fewer days of snow on the ground.…

It’s a cold night, and strong winds are blowing atop a hill in southwest Uganda. The wind rattles the four-by-eight-foot metal sheets that form the slanted walls of the giant insect trap. A diesel generator roars a few yards away, powering a 400-watt bulb at its center. The light is blinding to human eyes, but it’s a magnet for Ruspolia differens. In Uganda they’re commonly referred to as “grasshoppers” or nsenene (en-SAY-nay-nay), but they’re actually coneheaded bush crickets. At the bottom of the metal sheets, dozens of drums stand empty. Soon, hopes Kiggundu Islam, chairman of the local bush cricket trappers association, they’ll be filled with millions of the nearly three-inch-long insects. The “visitors,” as they’re called locally, come together to mate and feed in huge swarms after each rainy…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 241 NO. 3 LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE…

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF SCIENCE AND INNOVATION SNUG IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM’S thickest fur, sea otters can live their whole lives in the ocean, feeding heavily upon seafloor animals. In British Columbia they often dig clams out of fields of eelgrass (Zostera marina), leaving divots in otherwise dense mats of the aquatic vegetation. In meadows that otters inhabit compared with those they don’t, the eelgrasses are more genetically diverse and the plants more resilient, according to a study published in the journal Science. That’s because by foraging and disturbing the seabed, otters prompt the plants to flower and produce seeds, and their digging provides more space and sunlight for seeds to settle and germinate. Seagrasses such as eelgrass are imperiled as a result of warming and pollution; they’re…

IN ITS NATIVE PACIFIC WATERS, the sea slug Siphopteron makisig looks tiny and delicate, like a bud of colored glass. But in reality this slug is a mirror-image mating machine, as modeled by the pair in the photograph below. Like most sea slug species, S. makisig is a hermaphrodite, endowed with both male and female reproductive organs that it uses at the same time during mating. But unlike other sea slugs, it tops off trysts with unusually targeted stabbing. The sex starts normally enough. To fertilize eggs developing in each slug’s female parts, the other slug deposits sperm with its penis. Actually, only half of its penis, which has two prongs: one that delivers sperm with its bulbous end, and the other tipped with a syringe-like stylet (and sometimes called hypodermic…

SURROUNDED BY RUGGED PEAKS SO HIGH THEY TEAR CLOUDS APART, the tractor-size groomer backs over a 40-foot-tall mound of compacted snow, unrolling a bolt of white fabric. On top of the mound, six workers are stitching fabric panels together with a handheld, heavy-duty sewing machine. It’s June at Kitzsteinhorn in Austria, one of the highest and coldest ski areas in the Alps, and meltwater is gushing into ravines on the flanks of the mountain. But up on the glacier, the slope maintenance crew is preparing for the next season. Even at 10,000 feet, counting on natural snow has become too risky. So the team led by technical manager Günther Brennsteiner is taking out insurance. They’ve spent a month plowing the last of this season’s snow into eight multistory mounds, of…

DRAPED IN MIST, THE LUSH, FORESTED LANDSCAPE OF NAGARAHOLE TIGER RESERVE IN INDIA’S SOUTHWESTERN KARNATAKA STATE LOOKS ENCHANTED. An elephant lumbers through the foliage, feeding on shrubs and leaves, its gigantic ears flapping as if to the beat of a metronome. Up ahead along the dirt road, bison-like gaur graze in a meadow, not so much as glancing in our direction. Guided by photographer Shaaz Jung, who has lived in a lodge in the forest for the past 12 years, we drive on, stopping by a herd of spotted deer. An iridescent blue kingfisher flits between the trees. As sunlight cuts through the haze, the tranquility is broken by the bark of a deer ringing out in the distance. It’s an alarm, warning that a predator lurks nearby. Calls like…

AFTER YEARS OF making images outside of Japan, Ryotaro Horiuchi turned the camera toward his home country. As he questioned what constitutes Japanese identity—and his own identity as a Japanese person—he began looking into matsuri, the communal celebrations held in every region of Japan since ancient times. When Horiuchi attended Fukushima Prefecture’s Soma Nomaoi Festival, where samurai descendants and devotees dress in armor and compete on horseback each July, he was “overwhelmed and moved by the power and human aspect,” he says. The festival has been held for more than a thousand years; its origins lie in the military training of the lord of Soma’s samurai, who dedicated their lives to protecting his. Today’s participants take inspiration from the discipline, honor, and loyalty practiced by the samurai—values that have helped…

Snow cover and glaciers in most of the Alps have declined dramatically over the past 20 years, particularly at elevations below 6,500 feet. The loss is already hurting tourism and eventually may disrupt hydropower—the predominant source of energy in the Alps. PRESERVING THE SNOW Public and private groups are working to lessen the impact of shrinking snowfall. But current methods to create and preserve snow can cost millions of dollars, consume water and energy resources, and work only on a small scale.…

Indigenous leaders, teachers, farmers, and others have been targeted after speaking up against damage to their lands and culture. LUIS MANUEL SALAMANCA balanced on the tailgate of a rickety covered pickup truck, clinging onto the roof rack as it careened down the winding backroads of the Andes. It was dawn on May 22, 2018, and the Nudo de Almaguer—a fertile knot of dome-shaped mountains in southwestern Colombia known in English as the Colombian Massif—was beginning to stir. As the fog lifted, a woman milking a bloated brown cow came into sight in a clearing. Red-and-white buses crammed with schoolchildren fought for passage with horse-drawn carts and cargo mules on narrow roads. More than 650 feet below, the Magdalena River rushed through a steep, emerald gorge fed by waterfalls tumbling down from…

WHO A National Geographic Explorer who focuses on wildlife and conservation WHERE Cousine Island, Seychelles WHAT Nikon D3 with a 16mm fish-eye lens (both in water-proof housing) and two underwater strobe lights While in the Seychelles to photograph a book about biodiversity, Peschak took his camera everywhere. One day as he was walking to the sea, where he planned to take underwater images of the islands’ vibrant reefs, a common white tern began to hover near his face. Peschak, in full scuba gear with fins clenched in his teeth, raised his camera and clicked the shutter. This image is one reason he tells aspiring photographers that the best camera and lens combination is often the one you’re holding in your hands. National Geographic is the most popular brand on Instagram,…