The Canadian oil sand mines refused us access, so we rented this plane to see what they were up to: A slideshow of oil extraction from above Alberta's tar sands fields. (Warning: surreally-coloured pools of water inside) [more inside]
posted by nickrussell on May 20, 2012 - 129 comments

At 830 pm local time on March 26 the world celebrated Earth Hour 2011 by turning off the lights.
posted by Glibpaxman on Mar 28, 2011 - 97 comments

Chris Jordan’s “Running The Numbers” series and its sequel, along with “Intolerable Beauty”, places collections of objects in arrays and forms to visualize consumer consumption and its effects: a globular cluster of lightbulbs showing electrical waste in the United States; a landscape of empty plastic bottles (two million, the number used every five minutes), an array of tiny Barbies graphing breast augmentations; Pollockesque designs of contrails and handguns representing flights and deaths. More information at Jordan’s TED presentation; he’s also noted for his post-Katrina photographs of New Orleans.

Related: Todd McLellan (Flash) photographs disassembled vintage objects, some in patterns, others caught mid-explosion. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Feb 20, 2011 - 7 comments

An image of leafcutter ants at work in the Costa Rican rainforest has scooped top prize in the 2010 Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition (via The Guardian). The winners are on display now at London’s Natural History Museum. Online gallery. Previously on MeFi.
posted by londonmark on Oct 21, 2010 - 17 comments

John Kay’s Heyoka Magazine project January 2005 though June 2010 is now completed. All 34 volumes are online.
The Interviews section is a treasure trove from Shirin Neshat to Rick del Savio to David Michael Kennedy
Many reference Native American culture today: Tommy Lightening Bolt and Mala Spotted Eagle and William Under Baggage and Pete Catches
The range is great from Photos of the Apatani in Arunachal Pradesh to extreme bikram yoga and Leonard Cohen Everybody knows. The list goes on. Heyoka has morphed into non duality magazine
posted by adamvasco on Aug 29, 2010 - 2 comments

How does an ecosystem rebound from catastrophe? Thirty years after the blast, Mount St. Helens is reborn again. Interactive Graphic: Blast Zone. Also see National Geographic's feature article from 1981, chronicling that year's eruption. Previously on MeFi [more inside]
posted by zarq on Apr 20, 2010 - 18 comments

How much life could you find in one cubic foot? With a 12-inch green metal-framed cube, photographer David Liittschwager (of the Endangered Species Project) surveyed biodiversity in land, water, tropical and temperate environments around the globe for National Geographic. At each locale he set down the cube and started watching, counting, and photographing with the help of his assistant and many biologists. The goal: to represent the creatures that lived in or moved through that space. The team then sorted through their habitat cubes and tallied every inhabitant, down to a size of about a millimeter. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Feb 2, 2010 - 25 comments

Manufactured Landscapes: Photographer Edward Burtynsky captures haunting and beautiful images of landscapes devasted by industy and by waste. He has won numerous awards including the TED prize. [more inside]
posted by blue shadows on Dec 14, 2009 - 14 comments

The Polar Discovery team has documented science in action from pole to pole during the historic 2007-2009 International Polar Year, and covered five scientific expeditions. The science projects explored a range of topics from climate change and glaciers, to Earth’s geology, biology, ocean chemistry, circulation, and technology at the icy ends of the earth. Through photo essays and other multimedia, they explain how scientists collected data and what they discovered about the rapidly changing polar regions. From the awesome folks at WHOI.
posted by netbros on Nov 9, 2009 - 4 comments

Ice — Nick Cobbing features stunning photographs of the Greenland Ice Melt and a stormy voyage to Greenland on an old sailing ship. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jun 7, 2009 - 10 comments

Up in the Air. The aerial photography of Alex MacLean.
posted by homunculus on Dec 24, 2008 - 11 comments

Rethinking Earthrise. On the 40th anniversary of the NASA's Apollo 8 mission [caution: weird JFK animation], which answered Stewart Brand's epochal, LSD-inspired question "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" with an unforgettable image of a seemingly fragile and isolated blue planet, Nature editor Oliver Morton -- author of a new book on photosynthesis called Eating the Sun -- disputes the notion that the Earth is fragile and isolated. "The fragility is an illusion," he writes. "The planet Earth is a remarkably robust thing, and this strength flows from its ancient and intimate connection to the cosmos beyond. To see the photo this way does not undermine its environmental relevance -- but it does recast it."
posted by digaman on Dec 24, 2008 - 39 comments

Elemental ‘Earth Art’: 15 Epic Land Formations. 15 Epic Water and Ice Formations and Phenomena. 12 Elemental Fire and Light Formations and Phenomena: Flares, Lightning, Smoke and Meteors. 10 Breathtaking Natural Cloud and Color Formations.
posted by homunculus on Oct 19, 2008 - 10 comments

One World Journeys produces exciting and educational photo-documentary expeditions that connect online viewers to unique wilderness areas around the world. Travel to the remote mountain forests of the former Soviet Georgia, track jaguars in Mexico, dive on pristine coral reefs, swim with wild salmon and wildlife of British Columbia and step into the heat of the Sonoran Desert.
posted by netbros on Jul 7, 2008 - 2 comments

The Museum of Nature by Ilkka Halso. [Via Ectoplasmosis!]
posted by homunculus on Jun 9, 2008 - 7 comments

Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate. [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Sep 15, 2007 - 13 comments

Industrial Scars. Photography by J. Henry Fair. [Via The Underwire.]
posted by homunculus on Aug 8, 2007 - 28 comments

Mattingly Global, by Mary Mattingly, and Greetings From the Salton Sea, by Kim Stringfellow -- two web projects featured in the International Center of Photography's Ecotopia exhibit.
posted by jrb223 on Nov 16, 2006 - 4 comments

When the Glen Canyon Dam was completed, it took 18 years for the waters of the Colorado River to flood 186 miles of the most beautiful canyonlands in the world. David Brower called it America's "most regretted environmental mistake." But now Glen Canyon is coming back.
posted by alms on Nov 2, 2004 - 20 comments

Mountaintop Removal Mining. Now in High Resolution. Some amazing pictures of this mining process.
posted by grefo on Oct 1, 2004 - 8 comments

ShipBreaking The photographer Edward Burtynsky captures some dramatic images of ShipBreaking. The Perils of this industry were first highlighted in a Pulitzer prize winning series of articles by the the Baltimore Sun. Today, these ship graveyards still pose serious environmental issues as highlighted by this shipbreaking weblog maintained by Greenpeace.
posted by vacapinta on Nov 28, 2003 - 10 comments

Ecological art takes many forms, fascinating, beautiful, provocative, ephemeral, live, active, and even bloggy. See greenmuseum.org's featured artists and visit the Getty's Ecological Art Gallery (see also Art and the Earth, six photo essays).
posted by taz on Nov 11, 2003 - 4 comments

Goodbye Galen and Barbara. World-renowned wilderness photographer and writer Galen Rowell, and his wife and business partner Barbara Cushman Rowell, a photographer and writer in her own right, died early Sunday morning in an airplane crash outside of Bishop, Calif.
posted by faithnomore on Aug 12, 2002 - 6 comments