Planet Earth
A World Full of Images
Deserts - The Great Victoria Desert in Australia
Deserts - Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia
Deserts- Petrified dunes near Sesriem, Namibia
Deserts - Dune, Namib Desert, Namibia
Deserts - Aerial photo of Die Lange Wand, or Long Wall, Namib Desert, Namibia
Deserts - Conception Bay, Sand Sea, Namib Desert, Namibia
Desert s- A dust storm crossing the Red Sea from Egypt to Saudi Arabia on May 13th, 2005
Deserts - An intense Saharan dust storm sent a massive dust plume northwestward over the Atlantic Ocean on March 2nd,
2003
Deserts - A flash flood in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, 2004
Deserts - Atacama
Deserts - Atacama, the world driest desert
Desert - Colorado River Toad or Sonoran Desert Toad
Deserts - Black-Tailed Jackrabbit(south-western USA)
Deserts - Kangaroo Rat (south-western USA)
Deserts - Sidewinder Rattlesnake
Deserts - A Camel Thorn Tree (Acacia Erioloba) in the Namib Desert, Namibia
Antarctica, the frozen desert
•The windswept ice of Victoria Land in Antarctica stretches for hundreds of desolate miles. •This area receives less precipitation than most of the world's hot deserts.
Antarctica, the frozen desert
•Ancient ice on the edge of a glacier crumbles under its own weight in Drake Passage, Antarctica.• Some parts of Antarctica haven't had precipitation in over 100 years, earning the continent the nickname "frozen desert."
Antarctica, the frozen desert
Snow-mantled crags, Queen Maud Land in central Antarctica.
Antarctica, the frozen desert• Icicles drape the sides of an iceberg
in the waters around Antarctica.• Fifth-largest of the world's continents,
Antarctica comprises
5,500,000 square miles (14,245,000 square kilometers)
of snow-topped glaciers and ice sheets with less
than 5 percent ice-free.
Antarctica, the frozen desert
•In the midst of an Antarctic plain rises 8,963-foot-high (2,732-meter-high) Mount Melbourne, an active volcano cone that may have erupted as recently as the 18th or 19th century. •More than 30 active and inactive volcanoes dot the frozen continent.
Antarctica, the frozen desert
• Sheltered by a titanic iceberg,
emperor penguins bask in the Antarctic
sun. • Emperor penguins
survive this harsh environment, where wind chills can reach
-75 degrees Fahrenheit (-60
degrees Celsius), by huddling together in large groups to block wind and conserve
warmth.
Antarctica, the frozen desert•An enormous iceberg nestles into an ice shelf in Antarctica.
•Disintegrating ice shelves in Antarctica have caused alarm among scientists who warn that ice loss here could mean a disastrous rise in sea levels worldwide.
Grasslands (Prairie)
Ranchers herd cattle across
the shortgrass prairie of
Montana on their way to
winter pasturelands.
Grasslands (Prairies)
Grasslands (Prairies)• An American bison
stands in a field on the Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve in Oklahoma.
• The preserve, maintained by the
Nature Conservancy, is the largest
preserved portion of what was once 140 million acres (362.5 million hectares) of
grassland in the American Midwest.
There are about 2,500 American bison, which were once hunted to a few hundred animals, roaming the preserve.
Grasslands (Prairies)
•Wisp grass seedpods sway in the wind in South Dakota's Badlands National Park. •Fifty-six different grass species are found in Badlands.
Grasslands
Wyoming prairie lands
Grasslands (Prairies)
•A black-tailed prairie dog perks up outside his burrow in South
Dakota.
• These playful rodents live in well-
organized underground burrows called towns that can have populations in
the thousands.
Grasslands
•A swarm of insects hovers over grassland in Madagascar.
•The island nation has problems with locusts, insects that can destroy crops and grasslands quickly.
Grasslands (savanna)•An acacia tree stands tall as the sun rises over Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.• The savannas of the Serengeti stretch over Tanzania and Kenya, and support hundreds of species of plants and animals.
Tropical Rain Forest
The Congo Basin’s 500 million acres of tropical forest, second-largest in the world after
the Amazon, are known for an
incredible array of wildlife including great apes, forest
elephants, and some 700 species
of river fish.
Tropical Rain Forest
A scarlet macaw in
Brazil's Amazon rain forest. These birds are best
known for their loud
cackles, four-toed feet, and
brilliant plumage.
Tropical Rain Forest
A fig tree in the
Philippines, which
produces fruit on runners that come
from its trunk instead of on its branches.
Tropical Rain Forest
•A lizard suns itself on a leaf in the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto
Rico. • El Yunque is the
only tropical rain forest in the U.S. National Forest system, which
protects the 28,000 acres (11,331
hectares) in the Luquillo Mountains
Tropical Rain Forest
•A monkey from the Malaysian rain forest.
•Malaysia is still heavily forested, about 60 percent of the nation is tree-covered, but deforestation has proceeded rapidly during the nation’s recent economic development.
• Rain forests give refuge to tremendous biodiversity and those covering Peninsular Malaysia’s highlands also give rise to the rivers which supply 90 percent of the nation’s freshwater needs.
Tropical Rain Forest
• The red-eyed tree frog is an icon of the
Central American rain forest.
• When asleep, it's green color provides
effective camouflage.
• When threatened, the red of suddenly-exposed eyes or legs may startle predators and enable an escape.
Tropical Rain Forest
•Sunny rays penetrate the canopy of an Indonesian rain forest on Nias Island.
•Rain forests are among the Earth’s most biologically diverse habitats. Their fauna and flora are precious for their own sake but can also aid humans.
Rain forest plants, for example, produce chemicals to combat insects and disease that have led to the development of many beneficial drugs.
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