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Science / Our Planet

Converting the Magazine Mine, above (Bat Conservation International's Sheryl Ducummon, the Forest Service's Ray Smith and UNIMIN's Siebert Crowley in 1996), cost $130,000.

A Mine of Its Own

Where miners used to dig, an endangered bat now flourishes, highlighting a new use for abandoned mineral sites

Oil platforms (above, the Spree tied to a Gulf of Mexico rig) serve as artificial reefs, attracting organisms with intriguing properties.

Medicine from the Sea

From slime to sponges, scientists are plumbing the ocean’s depths for new medications to treat cancer, pain and other ailments

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Rescue Missions

Quests to Save a Tree… and a Country

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World View

Panama offers an ideal vantage point for scientists to see the big picture of life on earth

Italian primatologist Andrea Camperio Ciani says macaques are "scapegoats" for other thigns that are damaging the forest: cutting; overgrazing; and charcoal production.

Monkey in the Middle

Blamed for destroying one of North Africa’s most important forests, Morocco’s Barbary macaques struggle to survive

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Gas Guzzlers

New research shows how microscopic diatoms remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and may help keep the planet from overheating

The Atchafalaya Basin (dark green in this satellite image, with the Atchafalaya River running through its center) is almost a million acres of bottomland woods and swamp.

Saving Atchafalaya

A more than 70-year effort to “control” America’s largest river basin swamp is threatening the Cajun culture that thrives on it

Cattle suffocated by carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos

Defusing Africa’s Killer Lakes

In a remote region of Cameroon, an international team of scientists takes extraordinary steps to prevent the recurrence of a deadly natural disaster

Legal challenges from environmental groups over a two-year period stymied the efforts of ranger Kate Klein (a mile from her station) to thin a forest tract by commercial logging. A catastrophic fire broke out just days after she prepared a final rebuttal.

Fire Fight

With forests burning, U.S. officials are clashing with environmentalists over how best to reduce the risk of catastrophic blazes

Tidal wetlands of the Chesapeake Bay

Baywatch

Smithsonian scientists’ study of the Chesapeake may benefit a wider world

Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park Big Cypress Bend boardwalk

Fakahatchee Ghosts

But no exorcisms, please these rare orchids are the stars of a hit movie and a best-selling book

Naturalist and writer Burroughs (above, left, with conservationist Muir) fretted that he was "the most ignorant man" aboard ship.

North to Alaska

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward Harriman invited preeminent scientists in America to join him on a working cruise to Alaska, then largely unexplored

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Ice Capades

Alaska’s husband-and-wife team of avalanche experts work to save lives all winter, then take to their kayaks in summer

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Iceberg Wrangler

When a million-ton iceberg threatens your $5 billion oil platform, who you gonna call? Jerome Baker

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Sherlock of Spuds

In a case that could reveal the villain behind the Irish Potato Famine, the gumshoe is a plant scientist

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No Place Like Home

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Lasting Impressions

Scientists cast tall shadows but find themselves hard pressed to explain the blues to Mongolians

Calhoun tends some 450 apple varieties, more than four times the number commercially cultivated in this country.

Apples of Your Eye

Fruit sleuths and nursery owners are fighting to save our nation’s apple heritage…before it’s too late

They pop their heads out of the water to keep track of family members.

Otterly Fascinating

Inquisitive, formidable and endangered, giant otters are luring tourists by the thousands to Brazil’s unspoiled, biodiverse waterscape

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Rain Man

Snow, sleet, hail or volcanic eruption cloud physicist Peter Hobbs will find a way to fly into it

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