Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • A car rounds a curve along a scenic section of the Pan American highway north of Oaxaca in 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.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187636.jpg
  • Cattle branding at a ranch in North Dakota.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6842_964863.jpg
  • Cattle branding at a ranch in North Dakota.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6842_964862.jpg
  • Spectating cowboys sit on the top bar of the fence of a corral during a rodeo a t the Slope County Fair, which is the longest running consecutive fair in North Dakota--held more than 75 years. Slope County is the smallest county in the co untry to have a county fair--there is only one other town in the county besides Amidon.
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  • The Wrigley building on the north bank of the Chicago River.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT5887_1345816.jpg
  • In a serene setting, two wicker chairs invite visitors on the north porch of Mo ntgomery Place, a restored mansion that was built in 1805 and opened to the pub lic in 1988.
    MELISSA FARLOW_06189_3860.jpg
  • LeConte Glacier issues from the air in the Stikine Icefield. It is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago.<br />
<br />
 LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere. Since first charted in 1887, it has retreated almost 2.5 miles but is considered stable.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075058.jpg
  • The most recognized symbol of Monterrey, Mexico is Cerro de la Silla, the saddle-backed mountain range. It is the backdrop behind the modern orange sculptural monument with laser beams, “Faro Del Comercio” or “Beacon of Commerce,” by sculpture Luis Barraz that is a contrast to the traditional cathedral, Baroque style Cathedral of Monterrey. <br />
<br />
Beyond Macro Plaza both colonial and contemporary architecture are found on the streets. The third largest city in Mexico, Monterrey is the capital of Nuevo Leon. It is an industrial and commercial city with cultural interests. It’s said that Monterrey faces more to the north and the United States than south to Latin America.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187480.jpg
  • LeConte Glacier is marked by granite peak formations such as Devis Thumb in the background in the Stikine Icefield seen in an aerial view.<br />
It is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075093.jpg
  • A rumble of thunder and flashes of lightening illuminated a spectacular scene that “National Geographic calls the annual migration of sandhill cranes one of North America’s greatest wildlife phenomena,” according to the Crane Trust.<br />
<br />
Every spring 80% of Lesser Sand Hill Cranes and some Greater Sand Hill Cranes fly to the Platte River in greater concentrations than anywhere in the world. Fossil beds in parts of NE contain the remains of prehistoric cranes from 10 million years ago. Sand Hill Cranes feel safe from predators in about 2 inches of Ogallala water.  Grassland birds of the great plains migrate from Siberia and Canada to the southern US and Northern Mexico. Their main migratory path is north-south constrained by the Rocky Mountains in the same way as the aquifer was when the mountains were formed.<br />
<br />
Sand Hill Cranes land on Crane Trust property feeding on adjacent farmland's waste corn. Ironically, it is because modern agriculture took away the constrained rivers they need to survive. Annually 560,000 come through on migration in the shape of an hourglass fanning out in the north and the south, but hitting a choke point  in the middle around Kearney NE on the Platte River.<br />
<br />
The Crane Trust counted 413,000 Sandhill Cranes on this evening-more than they’ve ever counted before, so this image is what it must have looked like millions of years ago. Conservation groups tirelessly work to keep 20 miles of the Platte River a perfect habitat for the 560,000 cranes that fly through. <br />
<br />
Sandhill Cranes are millions of years old and evolved during the Pleistocene. One of the biggest migration corridors in the world hinges on a core of volunteers and the money they raise to dredge the rivers back to the place they were millions of years ago. So this photo addresses cranes habitat.
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  • Three caribou walk by storage tanks for oil near Prudhoe Bay where the Central Arctic herd migrates north each summer. After more than 40 years of production, Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America.  Lonely is located to the west and is a DEW line or Distant Early Warning radar station in the far northern Arctic.
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  • A jockey and horse walk back to the barn in a picturesque scene after an early morning workout during Keeneland race track's spring racing season. Founded in 1935, Keeneland takes pride in maintaining racing traditions. It was the last track in North America to broadcast race calls over a public-address system, not doing so until 1997. Most of the racing scenes of the 2003 movie Seabiscuit were shot at Keeneland, because its appearance has changed relatively little in the last several decades. The Thoroughbred horse track was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720973-1.JPG
  • A ginseng plant and it's roots in a woman's hand as a family hunts for ginseng in a West Virginia forest. A native plant in the Appalachian forest, ginseng is highly prized and harvested as a cash crop. It has been used for centuries in North America and Asia for a variety of illnesses and to increase vitality.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023708.jpg
  • Sunlight filters through the autumn leaves of aspen trees. Populus tremuloides, aspens, have heart-shaped leaves that tremble in the slightest breeze which is why they are also called "quaking aspens." Backlit in warm sun, the tree native to North America, thrives in the higher altitude of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705748.jpg
  • A dirt road cuts through a sagebrush sea to dark, cloudy skies of a distant, looming, rain storm. Sagebrush ecosystems cover vast stretches of western North America creating rangeland habitat for animals such as pronghorn antelope, black-tailed jackrabbits and sage-grouse.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705738.jpg
  • Fans gather on the lawn under flowering trees at Keeneland race track on race day. Founded in 1935, Keeneland takes pride in maintaining racing traditions. It was the last track in North America to broadcast race calls over a public-address system, not doing so until 1997. Most of the racing scenes of the 2003 movie Seabiscuit were shot at Keeneland, because its appearance has changed relatively little in the last several decades. The Thoroughbred horse track was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720973-2.JPG
  • A mare and foal crest a hill under darkening gray skies of a looming storm in South Dakota.  The silhouetted pair are part of the Gila herd of wild horses with Spanish origin that came to North America with the Conquistadors in the 1600s.
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  • Under a threatening storm, a herd of horses crosses a stream following the lead mare. In a wild horse herd, she leads them to food and water while the stallions follow behind to guard. A herd is similar to a neighborhood and made up of bands that are like families. These horses have dark dorsal stripes and primitive markings. They are genetic descendants of the Gila herd that came with Spanish Conquistadors to North America in the 1600s.
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  • Two stallions battle for dominance in a war dance of wild horses showing typical fighting behavior in a herd. Many mustang studs have missing ears, and their bodies are battle-scarred from bite marks and strikes from front hooves. <br />
The mustangs' primitive markings are consistent with ancient coloration of horses brought to North America by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1600s.
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  • The Taku River flows out of the Coastal Range in British Columbia to 100 miles northeast of Juneau, Alaska. <br />
A world-class wilderness, the Taku River watershed contains some of the richest wildlife habitat in North America and is teeming with grizzlies, wolves, Stone’s sheep, moose, woodland caribou, migratory birds, and abundant populations of salmon.  The Taku is southeast Alaska’s top salmon-producing river with nearly 2 million wild salmon returning to the river annually.
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  • Fans crowd in Keeneland race track's paddock on race day while horses are saddles for the next race. Founded in 1935, Keeneland takes pride in maintaining racing traditions. It was the last track in North America to broadcast race calls over a public-address system, not doing so until 1997. Most of the racing scenes of the 2003 movie Seabiscuit were shot at Keeneland, because its appearance has changed relatively little in the last several decades. The Thoroughbred horse track was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720963.jpg
  • A family hunts for ginseng in a West Virginia forest. A native plant in the Appalachian forest, ginseng is highly prized and harvested as a cash crop. It has been used for centuries in North America and Asia for a variety of illnesses and to increase vitality.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996256.jpg
  • In the last gasp of autumn, a few sparse leaves cling to bare branches of an aspen tree, Populus tremuloides. Aspens have heart-shaped leaves that tremble in the slightest breeze which is why they are also called "quaking aspens." Backlit in warm sun, the tree native  to North America, thrives in the higher altitude of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705746.jpg
  • A fern leaf frames a historic portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted along with tools of his trade as a landscape architect. The still life is arranged on a work stool in his office at Fairsted, now the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.<br />
<br />
Olmsted (1822-1903) is remembered as America’s first landscape architect and park planner. He designed many well-known urban parks including Central Park in New York, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, as well as parks in Buffalo, Rochester, and the Niagara Reservation. He is also credited with drawing plans for Louisville, Chicago, Boston, Detroit and Montreal parks as well as his final masterpiece, the grounds of Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956181.jpg
  • Three vehicles traverse rolling hills across the green tundra in summer months as the "haul road" runs 414 miles north to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The Dalton highway was built during construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, mostly gravel highway with a few paved sections. It follows nearby the pipeline through rolling, forested hills, across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean.
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  • Protective wrappers that once held drawings for America’s grandest landscapes remain in the vault at Fairsted, Olmsted’s home and studio in Brookline, Massachusetts. More than 140,000 plans are carefully preserved as they were found in his files at Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.<br />
Olmsted (1822-1903) left a legacy of urban parks that changed America’s landscape. He is recognized as he founder of American landscape architecture and best known for his vision of Central Park as a respite for urban masses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956180.jpg
  • A white swan swims in view from the rustic wooden boathouse of Bass Pond with autumn foliage. The Biltmore Estate in North Carolina is one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s finest and the last landscape he created.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968643.jpg
  • The Biltmore Estate is one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s finest landscapes and includes a six-acre lagoon that reflects the majestic house that is located near Asheville, North Carolina. In the late 1800s, George W. Vanderbilt sought the advice of Olmsted, the country’s preeminent landscape designer, to help him with an appropriate design to complement the French Renaissance-style château he was building in the Blue Ridge Mountains.<br />
<br />
Olmsted sited the house and created a lagoon, woodlands, gardens and the resulting Biltmore Estate that is considered a masterpiece and presently is enjoyed by nearly one million visitors each year.<br />
<br />
Here, frail and nearing 70 nears old, he wrote to a friend, “I have raised my calling from the rank of a trade . . . (to) an Art, an Art of design.”
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968591.jpg
  • The Biltmore Estate is one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s finest landscapes and includes a six-acre lagoon that reflects the majestic mansion that is located near Asheville, North Carolina. In the late 1800s, George W. Vanderbilt sought the advice of Olmsted, the country’s preeminent landscape designer, to help him with an appropriate design to complement the French Renaissance-style château he was building in the Blue Ridge Mountains.<br />
<br />
Olmsted sited the house and created a lagoon, woodlands, gardens and the resulting Biltmore Estate that is considered a masterpiece and presently is enjoyed by nearly one million visitors each year.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956196.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.
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  • Denis and Gail Boyer Hayes paddle a canoe on Lake Washington, near Seattle.  De nis was one of the organizers of the first Earth Day 25 years ago. Today he run s the Bullitt Foundation, which funds environmental groups in the Pacific North west.
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  • A lone truck moves down the Dalton Highway also known as the "haul road" running 414 miles north to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. Built during construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, this mostly gravel highway travels through rolling, forested hills, across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705771.jpg
  • Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum) is a distinctive wildflower with feathery seed heads and the blooms transform into upright clusters of wispy pink plumes. Native to North American prairies, it attracts butterflies in during it s late spring bloom.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705729-23.JPG
  • A mirror image of El Capitan framed with fall leaves is reflected in water pooled along the Merced River in Yosemite National Park. Located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the spectacular granite landscape was formed over millions of years by forces of nature. Volcanic uplifts transformed into glacial valleys, canyons, domes, rivers and amazing waterfalls, with habitat supporting rare species of plants including ancient Giant Sequoia trees.<br />
<br />
During a stint managing California gold mines, Frederick Law Olmsted, was inspired by nature while in Yosemite. He was America’s first landscape designer and is best known for his plans for New York Central Park. He became enthralled with Yosemite Valley and its “placid pools which reflect the wondrous heights.”<br />
<br />
Advocating for its protection, he planted the seeds for the National Park System 25 years before it was designated. He suggested the road on the valley floor travel around the perimeter-not down the middle along the Merced River-which would have spoiled the view. He also planned the route that tourists travel today from the valley floor to the giant sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove. Olmsted was appointed chairman of the Yosemite commission by the governor of California, and proposed that the valley floor and sequoia grove be set aside as a park—protected from development and left open for public enjoyment.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968645.jpg
  • A mirror image of El Capitan framed with fall leaves is reflected in water pooled along the Merced River in Yosemite National Park. Located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the spectacular granite landscape was formed over millions of years by forces of nature. Volcanic uplifts transformed into glacial valleys, canyons, domes, rivers and amazing waterfalls, with habitat supporting rare species of plants including ancient Giant Sequoia trees.<br />
<br />
During a stint managing California gold mines, Frederick Law Olmsted, was inspired by nature while in Yosemite. He was America’s first landscape designer and is best known for his plans for New York Central Park. He became enthralled with Yosemite Valley and its “placid pools which reflect the wondrous heights.”<br />
<br />
Advocating for its protection, he planted the seeds for the National Park System 25 years before it was designated. He suggested the road on the valley floor travel around the perimeter-not down the middle along the Merced River-which would have spoiled the view. He also planned the route that tourists travel today from the valley floor to the giant sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove. Olmsted was appointed chairman of the Yosemite commission by the governor of California, and proposed that the valley floor and sequoia grove be set aside as a park—protected from development and left open for public enjoyment.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956185.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.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187478.jpg
  • Lightning strikes above the town of Dodge City, Kansas.<br />
<br />
A lightening bolt cuts through the steel gray sky behind a grain elevator, a symbol of high plains rural America, that has lost more than 12 million people since 2000. Just 16 percent of the nation’s population lives in rural areas – the lowest in recorded history and down from 72 percent a century ago. <br />
<br />
Dodge City, like all towns on the high plains, have been seriously diminished by the rush to the cities. After the Dust Bowl and the family farm crisis and the domination of BIG AG that requires fewer people to produce more crops, communities face another crisis. <br />
<br />
With a dwindling supply of water, farmers unable to fill their grain elevators threatens communities further and grain will come in on the rails from other areas. Even with the water they have now, small, dusty towns are getting smaller and dustier.
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  • Aerial view of Riverside Park, Manhattan and the Hudson River at dusk looking north.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968783.jpg
  • The arid plateau north of the Grand Canyon is viewed from Navajo sandstone rocks of Coyote Buttes. From a 3,000-foot-high escarpment to a canyon 2,500 feet deep, Arizona's Vermillion Cliffs National Monument encloses a host of geological wonders.
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  • A worker enters the front door of the Umiat Hilton, in the unincorporated community in the North Slope of Alaska that is located on the Colville River. Oil fields near Prudhoe Bay were opened and the Navy built Umiat in 1944. The small lodge located near an airstrip is reputedly the coldest place in Alaska.
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  • Father and daugter kayak on still water near Moser Island which separates North and South Arms Hoonah Sound on Chichagof Island in Tongass National Forest.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075162.jpg
  • Young girls hike through an uplift meadow with a mosaic of flowering plants on Moser Island which separates North and South Arms Hoonah Sound off of Chichagof Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075161.jpg
  • A bulldozer works in a slurry of mud pushing rock that is washed at a gold mine near Coldfoot, Alaska. Gold was discovered in 1899 and prosoectors abandoned it five years later. The area was used as a service stop for trucks for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline beside the "haul road" or Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay in the North Slope.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705769.jpg
  • Hiking along an overlook above a rocky shoreline on the Lost Coast in the King Range National Conservation Area (NCA).<br />
The King Range NCA encompasses 68,000 acres along 35 miles of California’s north coast. The landscape was 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_705678.jpg
  • A mighty, old European beech tree creates a sculptural point in the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusettes. The park-like setting was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest link the Emerald Necklace, a series of parks. Founded in 1872, the arboretum today encompasses 265 acres, and has collection areas delineated by family and genus that are tributes to the natural world.<br />
<br />
Smooth gray bark is a highlight of the impressive beech tree although the European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) has a trunk that resembles elephant hide. Some trees in the beech collection were probably planted in the early 1800s. There are 14,900 individual plants with a particular emphasis on North American and east Asian Species. The Arboretum is a Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site and a National Historic Landmark.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968731.jpg
  • A mighty, old beech tree creates a sculptural point in the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusettes. The park-like setting was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest link the Emerald Necklace, a series of parks. Founded in 1872, the arboretum today encompasses 265 acres, and has collection areas delineated by family and genus that are tributes to the natural world.<br />
<br />
Smooth gray bark is a highlight of the impressive beech tree although the European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) has a trunk that resembles elephant hide. Some trees in the beech collection were probably planted in the early 1800s. There are 14,900 individual plants with a particular emphasis on North American and east Asian Species. Carvings in the smooth bark can create pathways for insects that can harm the health of the trees.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_968656.jpg
  • 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
  • Water splashes over a small waterfall in the north side of a Central Park woodlands known as The Loch which is a ravine offering a natural and untouched-looking setting. Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park, created features such as this to provide respite from the stresses of urban life.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6560_956423.jpg
  • 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
  • A mud volleyball game at a Powwow in South Dakota which is one the north end of the Ogallala Aquifer.
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  • Aerial view looking north of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline in the fall. The Bow Bridge crosses over The Lake to the Bramble.
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  • Mexican schoolchildren walk in pairs holding hands through the ruins of Teotihuacan. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is the most visited site in Mexico. <br />
Teotihuacan is known for having the most architecturally significant Mesoamerican pyramids built in the pre-Columbian Americas.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187487.jpg
  • Morning breaks with warm rays of sun over cool blue light of dawn as Sand Hill Cranes fly in to sit in two inches of precious Ogallala water on the Platte River. <br />
<br />
Grassland birds of the Great Plains migrate from Siberia and Canada to the southern United States and Northern Mexico. Their main migratory path is north-south and then in reverse as they fly in to breed in the High Plains aquifer. The birds path is constrained by the Rocky Mountains much in the same as the ancient aquifer. <br />
<br />
Birds depend on these protected waterways creating an hourglass shape in their migration making a wide path following to the narrow choke point at Kearney on the Platte River. Nearly a half million migrating Sand Hill Cranes fly in to Crane Trust property and adjacent farmland.
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  • Stallions enter a trap during a wild mustang roundup. Airborne wranglers working in helicopters with the Bureau of Land Management corral a thirsty herd of mustangs in Eureka, Nevada. Wild horses compete with wildlife and livestock for water and forage. <br />
An estimated 85,000 wild horses roam western lands, many are descendants of Spanish horses brought to the New World in the 1500's. In the 1800's the Spanish stock began to mix with European horses favored by the settlers, trappers and miners that had escaped or were turned out by their owners. Adoption programs and horse sanctuaries are attempts to provide homes for the once wild horses.
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  • Icy winds blow snow clouds blow over the jagged ridges of the South Chilkat Mountains that rise above Southeast Alaska's coast. Weather makes aerial photography a challenge as strong gusting winds force small float planes to land.
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  • Taku Glacier is a tidewater glacier and the largest in the Juneau Icefield. Long an anomaly among  glaciers, it was advancing but in recent years has started to succumb to climate change and retreat. The blue textured ribbon of ice is mixed with sediment with the terminus of the Taku River.
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  • Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops in Ketchikan - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage. Viewed from the air when landing a float plane, the ship is docked near sunset.<br />
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Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former logging town.
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  • Snow accents the contours of a fresh valley fill at a coal mine site seen in an aerial view. Tops of mountains are blasted away and flattened to reveal a small seam of coal, and the rock and debris is dumped into V-shaped valleys filling in stream beds.
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  • Writer John Mitchell rides a white horse under blue sky and puffy white clouds high in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon.
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  • A woman with a red flag is hoisted above a crowd at the Midi Festival.
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  • A man walks down the road in Tom Biggs Hollow in Letcher County, Kentucky, while his great grandchildren play nearby.<br />
Lucious Thompson joined Kentuckians for the Commonwealth when he found his land disrupted from mining above them. “There’s good mining and there’s bad mining,” Mr. Thompson said. “Mountaintop removal takes the coal quick, 24 hours every day, making my streams disappear, with the blasting knocking a person out of bed and the giant ‘dozers beep-beeping all night so you cannot sleep.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Thompson spoke with the authority of a retired underground miner. Underground miners led quieter, more pastoral lives above harsh, deep workplaces that were far out of sight. Now, the hollow dwellers have become witnesses more than miners as a fast-moving, high-volume process uses mammoth machinery to decapitate the coal-rich hills.<br />
<br />
“They make monster funnels of our villages,” said Carroll Smith, judge-executive, the top elected official, here in Letcher County, the location of some of the worst flooded hollows adjoining mountaintop removal sites. “They haven’t been a real good neighbor at all.”<br />
<br />
With underground mining, coal miners led quieter, more pastoral lives above harsh workplaces deep in the ground and far out of sight. With mountaintop removal, a fast, high-volume process that uses mammoth machinery to decapitate the coal-rich hills that help define the hollows, the residents have become witnesses more than miners.<br />
<br />
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/national/11MINE.html
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  • Slurry pond filled with toxic brew of heavy metals from coal washing can only be seen from the air. Dams hold back thick sludge with heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, and lead that routinely overflow into watersheds, contaminate drinking water, and drive toxic sludge into residents’ backyards.
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  • Wilderness islands off Prince of Wales Island at the Dixon Entrance of the Inside Passage seen in an aerial view.<br />
Tongass National Forest covers 16.7 million acres stretching over mountains, bays, glaciers, 1,000 islands, 18,000 miles of coastline, and almost all of mainland Southeast Alaska. Approximately 94% of Southeast Alaska is federally managed lands, and of that, 60% is set aside as Congressionally-designated Wilderness, National Parks, and National Monuments.
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  • South Chilkat Mountain peaks are kissed with warm light at sunset above the Icy Strait. High winds sweep ice and snow from ridge tops creating a landscape that is severe, yet appears serene. Winds were so strong that it took several flights to find calm air to make this image.
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  • Tracy Arm Fjord is formed by a retreating glacier melting between granite walls. Sawyer Glacier calves into the fjord in the heart of the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness seen from the air in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Crisp winter air clears over freshly snow-dusted trees in Tongass National Forest looking across the Icy Strait in the Inside Passage toward Southeast Alaska’s Chilkat Mountain Range. The region is known for it’s harsh winds and rugged landscape as well as it’s beauty that is seen in this aerial.<br />
Chilkat, in the native Tlingit language, means “storage container for salmon.” The name was given because of warm springs that keep the Chilkat River from freezing during the winter as it flows through the mountain range, thus allowing salmon to spawn late in the season, and creating safe “storage.”
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  • Harsh winds blow snow across the craggy ridges and peaks of the South Chilkat Mountains illuminating intense, orange colors of a winter sunset.<br />
The aerial view of the Coastal Range is directly across the Lynn Canal and the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska.
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  • Canoers paddle through a path cut though Chesser Prairie that is thick with water lilies and small islands in the Okefenokee Swamp. The wilderness trip seen in this aerial photo is located in remote parts of the swamp and takes three days to complete, planned so visitors see no one else on the trails.<br />
Established as a wilderness in 1937, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge protects the waters and wildlife of the 402,000-acre swamp.<br />
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The Okefenokee Swamp wilderness is in southern Georgia, and commonly known as “Land of the Trembling Earth.” More accurately translated, “Okefenokee” means “waters shaking” in Hitchiti, an extinct dialect in the Muskogean language family spoken in the Southeast by indigenous people related to Creeks and Seminoles.<br />
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The name refers to the gas that forms as submerged vegetation decomposes and bubbles up from the bottom of the swamp. Plants begin growing and clump together to form spongy little islands.
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  • Melissa Farlow, photographer on assignment for National Geographic, holds a cracked housing for remote cameras used to photograph wild horses stampeding.
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  • Timber is loaded for export onto a ship in protected waters on South Prince of Wales island. The forest industry depends on overseas sales of wood that is shipped mostly to Asia. The aerial scene is backlight in morning light.
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  • Rooftop view of sunbathers in New York's Central Park. Shadows sweep across Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre space where people congregate for picnics on in New York City on Sunday afternoon. <br />
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Woodlands dwarfed by high-rise buildings line the east boundary of Central Park and modern urban life surrounds the entire perimeter of the pastoral park.<br />
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Until 1934, a shepherd stopped traffic on the west drive so his flock could travel to and from their meadow.<br />
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When Central Park was just an idea, 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.
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  • A man with a mohawk and his girlfriend at the Midi Music Festival.
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  • Devils Thumb, captured from the air, stands distinctively higher than other granite peaks in Stikine Icefield. <br />
Cloaked with hanging glaciers, it's name is Taalkhunaxhkʼu Shaa in Native Tlingit language, which means "the mountain that never flooded." <br />
The sheer cliffs covered in ice are often unstable creating avalanches making it a technical challenge for advanced mountain climbers.
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  • Estuaries along the Lynn Canal are shrouded in morning fog while Lion's Head in the Tongass National Forest rises above as seen in an aerial view.
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  • 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.
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  • Plastic covers a stockpile of coal at Elk Run Mining Company processing plant seen in a aerial view. The town of Sylvester was covered in black coal dust causing health issues as it seeped inside homes.In 2001, Sylvester residents filed a lawsuit against Elk Run Mining for damages to property.
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  • Melissa Farlow, photographer on assignment for National Geographic, sets a camera trap at a water hole so a laser beam will trip the shutter to photograph wild horses.
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  • Ice-covered peaks of South Chilkat Mountains appear to have frosting on their tops from melting snow. Aerial photos is made when winds lay near sunset.
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  • Fog drifts over a secluded estuary and the Thorne River on Prince of Wales Island seen from the air in Southeast Alaska. The main island includes hundreds of adjacent smaller islands—a total of more than 2,600 square miles with 990 miles of coastline and countless bays coves, inlets, and points.<br />
Fjords, steep-sided mountains, and dense forests characterize the island. Extensive tracts of limestone include karst features.
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  • A waterfall flows from a melting glacier in the Stikine icefields near Devils Thumb. The Stikine Icecap, seen from the air, straddles Alaska and British Columbia and is known to climbers for its technically demanding and dangerous peaks and spires of granite.
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  • A 2.8 billion gallon sludge pond of toxic chemicals and heavy metals sits above a community in West Virginia. Aerial view of the coal slurry that contains elevated levels of chlorides, sulfates, arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium. Coal companies dispose of coal cleaning process creating a slurry in massive impoundments which are hundreds of feet deep and have failed or overflowed. Coal slurry impoundments represent a major threat to public health andaquatic organisms due to potential contamination of groundwater and streams.
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  • The Miller and Caudill family sit at a picnic table preparing string beans from the summer garden for canning in Mud Creek.
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  • Sandstone-capped escarpment glows in the setting sun in an aerial view of the 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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  • Cliffs and terraces and colorful layers of rock are illuminated on in an aerial photograph revealing the steps of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument seen from the air.. The wilderness area is one million acres of public land outside of St. George, Utah. Due to its remote location and rugged landscape, the monument was one of the last places in the continental United States to be mapped.
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  • A woman with a huge mohawk on a cell phone at the Midi Music Festival.
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  • A cloud of dust rises as two helicopters guide 870 mustangs across the desert into a trap. They were rounded up from the Winnemucca Rangeland Area after the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) determined that the number of wild horses there could not be supported on public land. Drought and wild fires created a dire situation for the horses, but advocates of mustangs believe horse herds are systematically being eliminated from western lands.<br />
Although there were as many as two million mustangs at the turn of the century, their numbers are much smaller and reduced regularly by BLM gathers.
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  • Fog rises from the base of the Straight Cliffs that rise up to the Kaiparowits Plateau in an aerial view of 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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  • Estuaries shrouded in morning fog are revealed in the intertidal region of the Southeast Alaskan coast along the Lynn Canal in Alaska's Southeastas seen in an aerial view.
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  • Warm light of the setting sun highlights jagged peaks of granite cloaked by hanging glaciers in the Stikine Icefield seen from the air. The icecap straddles the US-Canadian border between the Stikine River and Frederick Sound in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • Aerial view of a cruise ship that docks at Ketchikan's harbor bringing a city full of tourists for shopping and sightseeing. The once logging town is dependent on the growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. <br />
The ships travel the Inside Passage, a network of waterways between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. <br />
Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
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  • Kitty Lauman, a wild horse trainer relaxes with her daughter and her feet up after a long session with a difficult horse.
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  • Kitty Lauman learned to train horses from her grandfather and now, she works with mustangs and difficult horses on her western ranch. Her daughter rides one of the many wild horses she has tamed and trained.
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  • Trainer Kitty Lauman uses a rope as she works with a wild mustang on trusting to be touched. She learned gentling methods from her cowboy grandfather and patiently earns their confidence. She was a champion cowgirl going up and competing in rodeos.
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  • Taku Glacier is the deepest and thickest alpine temperate glacier in the world. Seen from the air, it originates in the Juneau Icefield of the Tongass National Forest, and converges with the Taku River.
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  • Harsh winds blow snow across the craggy peaks of the South Chilkat Mountains, illuminating intense, orange colors of a winter sunset.<br />
Photographed from the air, the Coastal Range is directly across the Lynn Canal and the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska.
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  • Islands surrounded by icy waters are seen from the air near Glacier Bay National Park. The wilderness contains rugged mountains, glaciers, rainforest and wild coastlines with sheltered fjords in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Fog-draped forest wilderness and rugged mountains are typical in Southeast Alaska where the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest receives an average of 200 inches of precipitation a year.
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  • Hobet 21 mountain top removal coal mine seen from the air, grows larger and approaches a family home. Mines run 24 hours a day, seven days a week creating coal dust impossible to keep out of houses.
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  • The Window on the World amusement park in Shenzhen allows Chinese to travel the world in an afternoon. Behind “Mount Rushmore” in this photo, actors dress as Africans in huts and Egyptians at the Great Pyramids of Giza. Historically, during Mao, Chinese have not been able to travel, but for now they can look at the “Eiffel Tower” and “Mount Rushmore” at Window on the World. <br />
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Because of China’s one-child policy, instituted in 1978, this is the first generation in the world’s history in which a majority are single children, a group whose solipsistic tendencies have been further encouraged by a growing obsession with consumerism, the Internet, and video games. At the same time, today’s young Chinese are better educated and more worldly than their predecessors. Whereas the so-called Lost Generation that grew up in the Cultural Revolution often struggled to finish high school, today around a quarter of Chinese in their 20s have attended college. The country’s opening to the West has allowed many more of its citizens to satisfy their curiosity about the world: some 37 million will travel overseas in 2007. In the next decade, there will be more Chinese tourists traveling the globe than the combined total of those originating in the U.S. and Europe.
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  • Smoke puffs up from the forest after a wildfire caused by lightning spreads into the night along a ridge line. Wild land fire devastation costs millions of dollars and loss of property and life. <br />
According to the Washington Post: High temperatures. Low humidity. Little rainfall. Dry vegetation. Fast winds.<br />
Wildfires depend on a combination of environmental conditions to start and spread. As global temperatures rise, research shows these conditions appear more intensely and frequently — escalating the risk of wildfires. Around 85 percent of wildfires over the past two decades were started by people.
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