Word: tundras
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...bidding for oil-drilling rights enriched his state's coffers by $900 million (see BUSINESS). Conservationists, for reasons of their own, fear that he may be right. In their understandable haste to obtain geological data before the bidding began, some of the oil companies scarred the tundra with seismic ditches that look from above like giant graffiti and littered it with garbage and empty barrels. Once full-scale exploitation of oil begins, the effects on the North Slope could become disastrous...
...Spongy Tundra. The Arctic, unlike land in temperate climates, does not easily recover from man-made disruptions. Because of the cold, orange peels do not decay for months. Twenty-five-year-old bulldozer tracks are still plainly visible on the tundra today, testimony to the slowness of the land's ability to heal itself. But the basic problem is that most of the Arctic lies on a hard foundation of permafrost-ever-frozen ground that prevents drainage. In the brief summer months, a thin cover of tundra soil thaws a foot deep. But if the ground is gouged...
...World War II bombing runs. Antique B-25s, the first U.S. planes to raid Tokyo, lumbered down the runway as old Liberator bombers tested their engines for takeoff. The planes were engaged in a different kind of warfare. More than 2.8 million acres of Alaska's timber and tundra-an area more than twice the size of Delaware -have burned this year. The planes' mission: dropping chemicals to slow the fires' advance...
...Large as Rhode Island. So far, the fires have devastated more than 650,000 acres of woods and tundra-an area roughly as large as Rhode Island. One fire jumped the Taylor Highway near the Canadian border, making the road impassable at times; others raged along the Alaska Highway. Around Fairbanks, smoke from the Salcha River fire 45 miles away became so dense that visibility was reduced to half a mile. The mining town of Chicken on the Taylor
...pictures are really abstractions," says Christ-Janer, 55, "that, I hope, come through with a magic that makes people see nature in them." He can brush a cool, grainy vision that recalls arctic tundra seen from 25,000 ft. up, or the scorched, forever autumnal desert of the American Southwest. Says he: "The earth, the sky and the sea are my sources of information...