#iamwilderness

[i-am-wilderness]

Happy World Oceans Day!

[i-am-wilderness]

The watershed of the Amazon basin begins in the high Andes.  In Ecuador, the continental divide is adorned by a string of massive, glacier-capped stratovolcanoes.  One of the most impressive of these giants is Cotopaxi, which at 5,897 m (19,347 ft) is the Earth’s highest active volcano.  Steeped in lore and considered a sacred mountain by local Andean peoples, Cotopaxi has erupted more than 50 times since 1738.   There has not been a major eruption since 1904, but minor eruptions have occurred as recently as January 2016.   A major eruption in the future a concern for Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, due to its close proximity to the volcano.  Past major eruptions have produced pyroclastic flows, melting the icecap and forming massive lahars - or volcanic mudflows - that destroyed local towns and traveled more than 100km to both the Pacific Ocean and Amazon basin.

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[skaminsky-blog]

#iamwilderness #wild #naturephotography

[i-am-wilderness]

Cayambe is the highest point in the world crossed by the Equator and the only place on the Equator with snow cover.  At 4,690 metres (15,387 ft), this Holocene Compound Volcano is the grand centerpiece of Ecuador’s Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve.  Stretching some 4,031.03 km2 (996,090 acres), Cayambe-Coca forms a contiguous wilderness from the uppermost peaks of the Andes east to the Amazon basin.  A wild patchwork of páramo grassland, lakes, ice pack, cloud forest and lowland tropical rainforest, the Reserve protects Andean condors, spectacled bears, mountain tapir, cougar and a dizzying array of birds, reptiles and amphibians.   The indigenous Kichwa and Cofán people also call this wilderness home.

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[i-am-wilderness]

Only 11% of Iceland is actually covered in ice, but this frozen expanse is as vast as all of the glacial ice on mainland Europe combined.  In total, Iceland has 269 glaciers, ranging from expansive ice caps to tiny ice streams.   The majority of Iceland’s ice can be found in the country’s wild and sparsely populated southeastern region.

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[i-am-wilderness]

Iceland’s population of 323,002 people live almost entirely along the island’s coastal margins, leaving the vast interior highlands a wild, rugged place.  Much of this wilderness is covered in ice cap, volcanic desert and solitary glacial peaks - like Snaefell - pictured here - which at 1833m is the highest point on Iceland that is not buried in ice. 

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[i-am-wilderness]

While impalas are quite common across eastern and southern Africa, the sub-population of black-faced impala (Aepyceros melampus ssp. petersi) are found only in the northwest Namibia and southern Angola.  Larger and darker than typical impalas, there may now be fewer than 1,000 adult individuals of this vulnerable antelope left in its original range.  To aid with their survival, they were introduced into Namibia’s Etosha National Park in the 1970s.  Today as many as 1,500 black-faced impala thrive in the Park’s mopane and acacia woodlands and are a favorite of visitors from around the world.

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[i-am-wilderness]

Happy World Oceans Day!