As a geoscientist, climate researcher, and landscape photographer, I’ve spent over 30 years exploring the inner workings of our planet. My goal is to communicate how everything is interconnected—and how fragile those connections are—in ways that are both...
The SPIEGEL-Bestseller book Wunderwerk Erde is a love poem to our planet What makes Earth so unique? How did our planet come into being, how has it changed over the eons of time—and how does it function, both inside and out? Wunderwerk Erde (Wonderwork Earth),...
One of the most alien-looking places on earth is Fly Geyser in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. It is an incredible experience to admire the rising Milky Way above the boiling water spouting geyser at new moon. Standing in 50°C hot water and at the same time...
The Badwater Basin in the Death Valley in California is an endorheic basin, a closed drainage basin, that retains all water with no outflow. It contains a dried out salt lake full of mud cracks. Temperatures are oven-like and hold the record for North America’s...
The ancient bristlecone pine forest high up in the White Mountains on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California grows at an altitude between 3000 and 3400 m (9800 and 11,000 ft) under arid high alpine conditions. They are the oldest living trees in the...
