Every year, the Climate School honors Earth Day by sharing images that celebrate the beauty and magic of our planet as captured by the Columbia community. A few highlights from this year’s selection include the towering Annapurna mountain range in Nepal; a Red eft in the lower Hudson Valley, New York; the spectacular Grey Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile; and an “exploding” lake in Costa Rica’s Poás Volcano.
Please enjoy our Columbia Beautiful Planet selections and visit our Earth Day website for more on this year’s theme, Planet Vs. Plastics.
Eastern screech owl in an apple tree on Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory campus. Credit: Timothy Trimble, Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryJuvenile Philippine long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis philippensis), Quezon National Forest Park, Luzon, Philippines, 2024. Credit: Jenna Lawrence, Columbia Climate SchoolLos Cuernos from the W Route trail, Torres del Paine, Chile (2024). Credit: Joey Parr, Columbia Climate SchoolRed eft (Notophthalmus viridescens) found in the lower Hudson valley, New York (2023). Credit: Adam Gelfand, E3B“Manhattanhenge” with the Chrysler Building, as seen from 42nd Street, NYC (2022). Credit: Andrew Fagerheim, Columbia EngineeringSunset in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the western coast of Italy aboard the JOIDES Resolution. Credit: Brandon Shuck, Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryAnnapurna, the 10th highest mountain in the world and an iconic symbol of the Himalayas, is located in the Annapurna mountain range of Gandaki Province, north-central Nepal. The hydrology and climate of the Himalayas are rapidly changing as the world continues to warm. These mountains are critically important to global and regional climate regimes and are also symbolic for many cultures and ways of life. Credit: Joshua Fisher, AC4Grey Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile seen from Grey Lake (2024). Credit: Joey Parr, Columbia Climate SchoolThe Palisades and Hudson, taken from the waterfall hike near Lamont/9W (2023). Credit: Andrew Fagerheim, Columbia EngineeringFieldwork in Cambodia studying the chemistry of rice paddy soils and how variability in climate and management affects rice nutrition. Credit: Benjamin Bostick, Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryR/V Marcus G. Langseth waking up to Table Mountain, South Africa (Cody Bahlau, LDEO)Male gelada (Theropithecus gelada), Bronx Zoo, 2016. Credit: Jenna Lawrence, Columbia Climate SchoolThe mile-wide crater of Costa Rica’s Poás Volcano hosts a steaming lake that occasionally explodes. Debris from past eruptions covers an area of 150 square miles around it. Credit: Kevin Krajick, Columbia Climate SchoolView of Morningside Park and Midtown Manhattan from Wien Hall (2023). Credit: Andrew Fagerheim, Columbia EngineeringThe JOIDES Resolution research ship out in the North Atlantic, Reykjavík, Iceland on International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 395, Reykjanes Mantle Convection and Climate. Credit: Claire Jasper, Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatorySlime mold in the lower Hudson Valley of New York (2023). Credit: Adam Gelfand, E3BAs Nepal continues to move past its civil war and the adoption of its new constitution, good environmental governance and peacebuilding are crucial. This is highlighted in a photo from a wall in the city of Pokhara, Nepal during a symposium on environmental peacebuilding (annual NERPS conference sponsored by AC4, CCS). Credit: Joshua Fisher, AC4View out of the airplane window of Kotzebue Sound to the left, the Noatak River in middle background, and Kobuk Lake to the right. This is the site of the Kotzebue Phytoplankton Observatory, a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation, to study the impact of climate change on the phytoplankton population, the emerging threat of harmful algal blooms, and food sovereignty for the community in the Native Village of Kotzebue, Alaska. Credit: Ajit Subramaniam, Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryThe sprawling flanks of Costa Rica’s Poás Volcano are lush, thanks in part to the nutrient-rich soil left by past eruptions; coffee and strawberries are major crops. Pictured is a farm where scientists recently planted a seismometer to detect underground disturbances. Credit: Kevin Krajick, Columbia Climate SchoolMan visiting his former home in the hill country of Gansu Province, China where many communities are being relocated to oasis communities in the desert to provide better access to services and new economic activities (August 2018). Credit: Alex de Sherbinin, CIESINSunset on Columbia University’s Morningside campus (2022). Credit: Andrew Fagerheim, Columbia Engineering
