Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • A bird's-eye view of summertime sunbathers dotting Central Park's Sheep's Meadow. More than thirty-five million visitors to Manhattan come to the park annually.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968654.jpg
  • Aerial of Revillagigedo Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_1114606.jpg
  • The volcanic landscape of Kamchatka with snowy peaks above the clouds in an aerial photograph.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260935.JPG
  • Twilight scene from above snow-covered New York's Central Park. An elevated view shows a curved road planned by Frederick Law Olmsted to create a greater sense of space and mystery about what was to come around the next bend.<br />
Olmsted partnered with Calvert Vaux to plan “Greensward,” and won a design competition to make the what became a beloved urban park. When the idea was conceived, New York was much smaller and no one could imagine the open space surrounded by a city with tall buildings. Olmsted was a visionary and understood that man needed nature to combat the stresses of city life.  Construction began in 1858  and was completed fifteen years later. Central Park was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 and is now managed by Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit which contributes eighty five percent of the park’s $37.5 budget. More than thirty-five million visitors to Manhattan come to the park annually.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968596.jpg
  • A view of mountain peaks with a lake below in Glacier National Park.
    MELISSA FARLOW_06103_495825.jpg
  • Three volcanoes, now dormant, formed Easter Island half a million years ago.  Rano Kau is the largest crater on the island with an aerial view from the mirador on the headlands. Inside is a lagoon of fresh water filling the crater that is almost a mile wide and 1,000 feet high above the Pacific Ocean in Rapa Nui National Park.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8059_1477354-2.JPG
  • Aerial view of snow covered mountain top removal mining site. After blasting the top of a mountain, trucks remove debris dumping dirt and rock into valleys and streams destroying watersheds. Over 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried and 300,000 acres of diverse temperate hardwood forests obliterated with valley hills like the white V in the foreground. Pollution from toxic chemicals fill sludge ponds and in flooding, contaminate drinking water. A moonscape of unusable land is left.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996789.jpg
  • Aerial view of morning fog rising from the Dolomites, a mountain range in the northern Italian Alps numbering 18 peaks which rise above 3,000 meters. Jagged ridges  are made of  characteristic rock consisting of fossilized coral reefs formed during the Triassic Period (around 250 million years ago) by organisms and sedimentary matter at the bottom of the ancient tropical Tethys Ocean.
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  • Aerial view of Jackson Park and "Golden Lady" sculpture. Installed in 1918, the Statue of the Republic commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the World’s Columbian Exposition and the centennial of statehood for Illinois. The twenty-four-foot-tall gilded bronze sculpture is a much smaller and slightly modified version of Daniel Chester French’s original sixty-five-foot-tall Statue of the Republic, one of the most iconic features of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Downtown Chicago is to the north and Lake Michigan lies to the east of Jackson Park.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968655.jpg
  • Aerial view of Pilot Rock at twilight. The iconic rock face is a plug of volcanic basalt that juts 400 feet above Cascade–Siskiyou National Monument in a crossroads of mountain ranges, geological eras and habitats. The 65,000-acre monument is at the junction of the Oregon and Cascades and Siskiyou Mountains with Mt. Shasta on the left rising in the far distance across the state line in California.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_680972.jpg
  • Shadows sweep across Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre space where people congregate for picnics on in New York City. Until 1934, a shepherd stopped traffic on the west drive so his flock could travel to and from their meadow.<br />
An elevated view shows woodlands dwarfed by buildings line the east boundary of Central Park and modern urban life surrounds the entire perimeter of the pastoral park.<br />
When Central Park was being considered, most New Yorkers lived below 38th Street in crowded, chaotic quarters. Frederick Law Olmsted planned the park with Calvert Vaux as a refuge from urban stress in a natural environment. The Park’s design embodies Olmsted’s social consciousness and commitment to egalitarian ideals.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968653.jpg
  • Aerial view of the Hackensack River.
    MELISSA FARLOW_06460_671043.jpg
  • Aerial view of a single horse grazing in picturesque, curved-fenced pastures. Once all farms were lined with white fences, but many now are black—easier to maintain. Lane's End is one of the most important stallion farms and breeding operations in the U.S. and also one of the top operations globally.
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  • Aerial view of Riverside Park, Manhattan and the Hudson River at dusk looking north.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968783.jpg
  • Aerial view of Donamire Farm's fenced pastures. Once all farms were lined with white fences, but many now are black—cheaper to maintain. A Thoroughbred horse farm doing well financially still follows the tradition with white paint.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720976.jpg
  • An aerial view of West Virginia mountains in rich autumn hues.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023681.jpg
  • Aerial view looking north of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline in the fall. The Bow Bridge crosses over The Lake to the Bramble.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968662.jpg
  • Aerial view of the Great Smoky Mountains with autumn foliage.
    RANDY OLSON_06103_495767.JPG
  • Aerial view of the Dolomites dusted with snow under a setting full moon at sunrise. The mountain range in the northern Italian Alps numbers 18 peaks that rise above 3,000 meters. The striking landscape features vertical walls, sheer cliffs and a high density of narrow, deep and long valleys. The geology is marked by steeples, pinnacles and rock walls, the site also contains glacial landforms and karst systems.
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  • Aerial view of foggy Washington coastline with sea stacks.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7061_760090.jpg
  • Aerial view of Stone Farm, a 2,000 acre horse-breeding farm with a private track to train Thoroughbred horses. Stone Farm is owned by Arthur Hancock III, a member of one of the pre-eminent American horse racing families.  Hancock has bred, stood, and sold some of the best horses of all time and two Stone Farm-raised, co-raced colts won the Kentucky Derby.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720962.jpg
  • Aerial view of mountain top removal coal mining site and V-shaped valley fills that create a moonscape of unusable land. Roughly 1.2 million acres, including 500 mountains, have been flattened by mountaintop removal coal mining in the central Appalachian region, and only a fraction of that land has been reclaimed for so-called beneficial economic use.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023699.jpg
  • Aerial view of Hobet 21, a large mountaintop removal mine site was among the largest coal surface mines in West Virginia. The Lincoln County mine ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week expanding over hills and valleys, filling in Connelly Branch creek. At its peak in 2002, the mine produced 5 million pounds of coal in one year. After the company was bankrupt in 2015, the site was passed on to a conservation firm who continued mining.<br />
A lone house sits beside Mud River in the shadow of the mine's encroaching path. The town of Mud hasn’t been much of a community in the couple of decades since the post office closed, and in 1998 around 60 residents remained. They had two churches and a ball field. In early 1997, Big John, the mine’s 20-story dragline, moved above Mud and more houses, near this one, were bought and destroyed.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996269.jpg
  • Aerial view.  Dusted in snow, a section of the 12-mile ridge line of the Grand Wash Cliffs glows at twilight. Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument marks a transition zone between the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range Provinces. The 37,030-acre protected wilderness region includes rugged canyons, scenic escarpments, and colorful orange, sandstone buttes in northern Arizona.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_680964.jpg
  • An aerial view of the port city of Sinop at twilight.
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  • An aerial view of Washington's coastline with sea stacks.
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  • An aerial view of Washington's coastline with sea stacks.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7061_760122.jpg
  • Aerial view of the Samples Mine mountain top removal coal mining site. A dragline removes overburden after mountains are dynamited to get to a small seam of coal.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023644.jpg
  • An aerial view of a meteor impact crater near the town of Halls Creek.
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  • An aerial view of a flooded river and rain storm in distance.
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  • An aerial view of the cloud-shrouded Caucasus mountains.
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  • Aerial view of Concord, New Hampshire, at night.
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  • An aerial view of a coffee-colored river with rain in distance.
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  • An aerial view of the Wooded Isle in Chicago's Jackson Park. Located south of the city on Lake Michigan, the park was planned in 1890 and designed  for the World's Fair. <br />
Frederick Law Olmsted worked with Calvert Vaux to create the park with a lagoon that started as a treeless marsh. Olmsted planned terraces and pedestrian walkways that were surrounded by neo-classical styled buildings. The one on the north side of the park presently houses the Museum of Science and Industry.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956188.jpg
  • An aerial view of cattle walking across a flooded field.
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  • An aerial view of cattle walking across a flooded field.
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  • An aerial view of Australian landscape with hills, rivers, and rain.
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  • An aerial view of the Kızılırmak River
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  • Aerial view of Tau Island landscape.
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  • Aerial view illuminates eroded slopes above the waves on the coast of California's King Range National Conservation Area (NCA).<br />
The area encompasses 68,000 acres along 35 miles of landscape too rugged for highway building, giving the remote region the title of California’s Lost Coast. It is the Nation's first NCA, designated in 1970.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705729-52.JPG
  • Aerial view of a drag line that scrapes through rock after a explosives blast away the top of mountains. A fresh snow contrasts the blackened coal that is revealed. Mountaintop removal mining devastates the landscape, turning areas that should be lush with forests and wildlife into barren moonscapes.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023728.jpg
  • Aerial view illuminates light fog lifting above the waves on the coast of California's King Range National Conservation Area (NCA).<br />
The area encompasses 68,000 acres along 35 miles of landscape too rugged for highway building, giving the remote region the title of California’s Lost Coast. It is the Nation's first NCA, designated in 1970.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_680969.jpg
  • Aerial view of El Molo Island in Lake Turkana. This island is where the last four El Molo live.
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  • Aerial view of a rain cloud over a snaking river.
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  • Aerial view of Mohenjo Daro.
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  • Aerial view of Craters of the Moon National Monument.
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  • An aerial view of a  river and tributary streams near Wyhdham, Australia
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  • An aerial view of a  river and tributary streams.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7112_763266.JPG
  • Aerial view of river and mud flats.
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  • Aerial view of Valley of Chamonix from a chair lift.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_1114513.jpg
  • Aerial view of river and mud flats.
    RANDY OLSON_RF4319_1114374.JPG
  • The Paria Rivers snakes through the sandstone landscape north of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. Narrow slot canyons form along it from the waters that originate in the north side of the 112,500-acre Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area at the Utah/Arizona border. The aerial view helps explain erosion through geologic time.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705729-42.JPG
  • Aerial view shows snow that accentuates the contours of a flattened, freshly cut mountaintop removal site in Cabin Creek, West Virginia. Mountaintop removal is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are blasted away to expose the seams of coal underneath.<br />
As much as 500 feet or more of a mountain summit may be leveled. The earth and rock from the mountaintop is then dumped into the neighboring valleys.<br />
Analysis from a study that Appalachian Voices commissioned along with Natural Resources Defense Council  shows that 1.2 million acres have been mined for coal. “Over 500 mountains have been leveled, and nearly 2,000 miles of precious Appalachian headwater streams have been buried and polluted by mountaintop removal.”
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023729-2.JPG
  • Aerial view shows snow that accentuates the contours of a flattened, freshly cut mountaintop removal site in Cabin Creek, West Virginia. Mountaintop removal is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are blasted away to expose the seams of coal underneath.<br />
As much as 500 feet or more of a mountain summit may be leveled. The earth and rock from the mountaintop is then dumped into the neighboring valleys.<br />
Analysis from a study that Appalachian Voices commissioned along with Natural Resources Defense Council  shows that 1.2 million acres have been mined for coal. “Over 500 mountains have been leveled, and nearly 2,000 miles of precious Appalachian headwater streams have been buried and polluted by mountaintop removal.”
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023729-1.JPG
  • Aerial view shows snow that accentuates the contours of a flattened, freshly cut mountaintop removal site in Cabin Creek, West Virginia. Mountaintop removal is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are blasted away to expose the seams of coal underneath.<br />
As much as 500 feet or more of a mountain summit may be leveled. The earth and rock from the mountaintop is then dumped into the neighboring valleys.<br />
Analysis from a study that Appalachian Voices commissioned along with Natural Resources Defense Council  shows that 1.2 million acres have been mined for coal. “Over 500 mountains have been leveled, and nearly 2,000 miles of precious Appalachian headwater streams have been buried and polluted by mountaintop removal.”
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023729.jpg
  • Aerial view of Hobet 21 mountain top removal coal mining site looms over one of the few remaining houses in Mud, W.V. Once this was a quiet rural community, but mining companies can legally come within 100 feet of a family cemetery and 300 feet from a home and they run 24 hours a day and seven days a week. <br />
Hobet 21 once produced about 5.2 million tons of coal, making it among the largest surface mines in the state. The Lincoln County mine expanded to fill in Connelly Branch creek, and after the company was bankrupt in 2015, the site was passed on to another firm who continued mining.<br />
The town of Mud hasn’t been much of a community in the couple of decades since the post office closed, but in 1998 around 60 residents remained. They had two churches and a ball field. In early 1997, Big John, the mine’s 20-story dragline, moved above Mud and more houses, near this one, were bought and destroyed.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023701.jpg
  • Aerial view of New York's Central Park looking south to include Bethesda Fountain, the Bow Bridge spanning across the Lake to the Ramble, Sheep's Meadow and the Manhattan skyline.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956422.jpg
  • Sunrise aerial photo showing traffic crossing Juarez-Lincoln International, one of four bridges over the Rio Grande River located in the cities Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, that connects the United States with Mexico.<br />
The Pan-American Highway is a network of road that passes through the America's many diverse climates and ecological types – ranging from dense jungles to arid deserts.
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  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
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  • Aerial view of timber that is loaded for export onto a ship on South Prince of Wales. The forest industry depends on overseas sales and load floating logs from a nearby mill in a protected bay.
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  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-3.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-2.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239-1.JPG
  • Aerial  photo shows tire tracks in the tundra are left by poachers. <br />
<br />
 The Kamchatka Shelf in Russia is mostly inaccessible.  Flying in and out by MI-8 helicopter is expensive but the fear is that the roads being constructed  for oil and gas pipelines will open these remote areas to more poaching.
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  • Aerial photo showing the braided river ecosystem for salmon spawning.<br />
<br />
When salmon die they fertilize the entire Pacific Rim. Warm waters from volcanic systems within with the coldest sea in the Pacific Rim create an ideal, nutrient-rich environment. And the river systems—some of the last braided streams on Earth that have not yet been constrained by agriculture—are vital habitat for salmon.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260978.JPG
  • The remote fishing town of Khailino.<br />
An aerial photograph of Khailino from a MI-8 helicopter between Tilichiki and Khailino, shows the Vyvenka River linking these two communities.  Flying north in Kamchatka, there are miles and miles of untouched tundra, streams, wetland, and rivers like this meandering, unconstrained river that is a perfect environment for salmon spawning.
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  • The Vyvenka River loops through a floodplain in an oxbow curve in Kamchatka, a peninsula in far east Russia that is the size of California but only 130 kilometers of roads.  All roads are clustered around the capital, Petropavlovsk.  All other travel is by plane, MI-8 helicopter or something they call an ATV but we refer to them as a tank. Flying over the big empty landscape, the view is wetlands, tundra, braided streams, and meandering unconstrained rivers. Free of roads and dams, it is the perfect environment for salmon swimming upstream to spawn.
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  • Arial view at sunset of a center-pivot irrigation system sprays water from the Ogallala aquifer onto crops although much evaporates in this process.
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  • An aerial tramway to Zugspitz, Germany's tallest peak in the Alps.
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  • Blazing sunset leaves in shadow the famous gap in Kiger Gorge, atop Oregon's Steens Mountain. Steen's Mountain Wilderness is “the largest fault-block mountain in the northern Great Basin.”  The aerial view shows a forty mile long escarpment in southeastern Oregon has a notch cut out of the top and drops abruptly to the dry Alvord Desert, 5,500 feet below.<br />
Bulldozing down to basalt, Ice Age glaciers carved our huge gorges out of the Great Basin's largest fault block mountain. Beyond, Steens's east face plummets a vertical mile.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705729-56.JPG
  • Steen's Mountain Wilderness is “the largest fault-block mountain in the northern Great Basin.”  The aerial view shows a forty mile long escarpment in southeastern Oregon has a notch cut out of the top and drops abruptly to the dry Alvord Desert, 5,500 feet below.
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  • Morning fog rises from the Upper Missouri River Breaks in Montana.
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  • Hundreds of cars line up to pay a toll on the New Jersey Turnpike.
    MELISSA FARLOW_06460_668288.jpg
  • Sunlight highlights aspen trees, Populus tremuloides, as their colors turn golden in the autumn. "Quaking aspen" is Colorado's signature tree in the high altitude of the San Juan mountains near Silverton. Aspens grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling. They spread by root suckers and new starts may pop up 100–130 ft from the parent tree. Each tree may live for 40–150 years, but the root system of the colony can be thousands of years old sending up new trunks as the older trees die off above ground.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705744.jpg
  • Sea stacks tower above the surf at Shi Shi Beach.
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  • Mount Olympus and its sister peaks.
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  • Sandstone-capped escarpment glows in the setting sun in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. The 280,000-acre wilderness is located at the Utah/Arizona border where the wooded Paria Plateau stretches south and  drops 3,000 feet at the monument’s namesake—the Vermilion Cliffs.
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  • Aerial  view of the Maze District where scenic rock formations of the remote terrain in Canyonlands National Park. 337,598 acres of colorful canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches, and spires are in the heart of southeast Utah's high desert. Water and gravity have been the prime architects of this land, sculpting layers of rock into the rugged landscape
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  • Lake Turkana and the Omo River Delta.
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  • Lake Turkana and the Omo River Delta.
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  • Lake Turkana and the Omo River Delta.
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  • Storm clouds build darkening sky above Kurilskoye Lake Preserve.<br />
<br />
The Sea of Okhotsk to the west of Kamchatka is the coldest body of water in the Pacific Rim. Volcanic under currents create nutrient-rich upwellings, and the perfect marine environment for salmon.
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  • Batu Hijau gold mine's dedicated port facilities at Benete Bay.
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  • Batu Hijau gold mine's dedicated port facilities at Benete Bay.
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  • Fog rises from the base of the Straight Cliffs that rise up to the Kaiparowits Plateau in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The protected Bureau of Land Management monument spans across nearly 1.87 million acres of public land from the cliffs and terraces to geologic treasures of slot canyons, natural bridges and arches. It’s remote location and rugged landscape make it an extraordinary unspoiled natural area valued by biologists, paleontologists, archeologists, historians and those who love quiet creation and solitude. Grand Staircase was named the first national monument in 1996.
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  • Fog rises from the base of the Straight Cliffs that rise up to the Kaiparowits Plateau in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The protected Bureau of Land Management monument spans across nearly 1.87 million acres of public land from the cliffs and terraces to geologic treasures of slot canyons, natural bridges and arches. It’s remote location and rugged landscape make it an extraordinary unspoiled natural area valued by biologists, paleontologists, archeologists, historians and those who love quiet creation and solitude. Grand Staircase was named the first national monument in 1996.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705729-43.JPG
  • A terraced V-shaped valley fill sits at the edge of a reclaimed West Virginia mining site. Entire mountains are blasted away in mountaintop removal mining in order to obtain a small seam of coal. Unwanted rock is pushed into valleys and streams destroying natural watersheds and the length of the Ohio River has been filled in. The result is a threat to clean water and the biodiversity of the ecosystem.<br />
<br />
The Central Appalachian Plateau was created 4 million years ago, and one of its richest assets is wilderness containing some of the world’s oldest and biologically richest temperate zone hardwood forest. A flattened moonscape on top is mostly unusable.
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  • Batu Hijau gold mine's dedicated port facilities at Benete Bay.
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  • The mysterious Nazca lines form a monkey in the desert of southern Peru. Other animals and geometric shapes are best seen from the air. Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture that created them began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700. They were made with light-colored sand when the top foot of rock was removed by an ancient culture.
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  • Animal figures as well as geometric shapes are part of the mysterious Nazca lines best seen from the air in the Peruvian desert.  The figures--as well as triangles, rectangles and straight lines--run for several kilometers across the dry barren land. The desert floor is covered in a layer of iron oxide-coated pebbles of a deep rust color. The ancient peoples created their designs by removing the top 12 to 15 inches of rock, revealing the lighter-colored sand below. Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture that created them began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187622.jpg
  • Mysterious Nazca lines form animal and geometric figures seen from the air.  A hummingbird shape as well as perfect geometric designs like triangles, rectangles and straight lines run for several kilometers across the desert. The desert floor is covered in a layer of iron oxide-coated pebbles of a deep rust color. Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture that created them began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700. The ancient peoples created their designs by removing the top 12 to 15 inches of rock, revealing the lighter-colored sand below.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187620.jpg
  • The mysterious Nazca lines form a spider, one of many animal and geometric shapes best seen in the air in Peru's southern desert.  Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture that created them began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700. They were made with light-colored sand when the top foot of rock was removed by an ancient culture.
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  • Mysterious Nazca lines form strange two-footed animal figures in the desert of Peru. Many creatures as well as geometric shapes run for miles and are best seen from the air. They were made by exposing lighter colored soil when sun-baked stones were moved and piled up. Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture that created them began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700
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  • Mysterious Nazca lines form geometric shapes in the desert that are best seen from the air. Besides animals forms, there are more than 800 straight lines on the coastal plain, some of which are 30 miles Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture, which began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700.
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  • Taku Glacier advances in the Juneau Ice Field.
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  • Waterfall of melting ice from glaciers in Stikine icefieds.
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  • Le Conte glacier in Stikine ice fields near Petersburg.
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  • Fresh clear cut and logging roads on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • A logging camp on a protected cove in Tongass National Forest.
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