Nature beauty

Heart in Voh, New Caledonia, France

A mangrove swamp is an amphibious tree formation common to muddy tropical coastlines with fluctuating tides. It consists of various halophytes (plants that can develop in a saline environment) and a predominance of mangroves. These swamps are found on four continents, covering a total area of 65,000 square miles (170,000 km2), or nearly 25 percent of the world’s coastal areas. This represents only half of the original range, because these fragile swamps have been continually reduced by the overexploitation of resources, agricultural and urban expansion, and pollution. The mangrove remains, however, as indispensable to sea fauna and to the equilibrium of the shoreline as it is to the local economy. New Caledonia, a group of Pacific islands covering 7,000 square miles (18,575 km2), has 80 square miles (200 km2) of a fairly low (25 to 33 feet, or 8 to 10 m) but very dense mangrove swamp, primarily on the west coast of the largest island, Grande Terre. At certain spots in the interior that are not reached by seawater except at high tides, vegetation gives way to bare, oversalted stretches called tannes,” such as this one near the city of Voh, where nature has carved this clearing in the form of a heart.

The eye of the Maldives, atoll of North Mali, Maldives

The eye of the maldives is a faro, a coral formation on a rocky base that has sunk, hiding all but a ring-shaped reef that encircles a shallow lagoon. Coral can only form in water of a relatively high temperature, and thus atolls develop principally in intertropical regions. The lowest country in the world, with a high point not exceeding 8.25 feet (2,5 m), the maldive archipelago contains 26 large atolls, including 1,190 islands, nearly 300 of which are inhabited either permanently or seasonally by tourists. The archipelago was severely hit by the tsunami of december 26, 2004, which killed 83 and injured more than 2,000. The coastlines were altered, and some of the islands sank beneath the sea. The coral reefs were also partially destroyed by the gigantic wave and the debris it carried. As well as affecting the tourist trade, the maldives’ main economic resource, the damage to the coral food chain has harmed fishing and the livelihoods of the local people. Aware of the archipelago’s fragility, the authorities and the international community had already set up containing measures to limit the rise of the water level, but the barriers around the capital, male, did not stop the water from getting through.

Fields of tulips near Lisse, near Amsterdam, Netherlands
In April and May of every year, Holland briefly dons a multicolored garb. Since the first flowering in 1594 of bulbs brought back from the Ottoman Empire by the Austrian ambassador, four centuries of selection have led to the development of more than 800 varieties of tulip. On more than 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares), half devoted to tulips and one-quarter to lilies, the Netherlands produce 65 percent of the world production of flowering bulbs (or some 10 billion bulbs) and 59 percent of the exports of cut flowers. Dutch agriculture, which employs 5 percent of the active population, is one of the world’s most intensive and places the country third among world exporters of agricultural produce (after the United States and France). But chemical products have caused a deterioration in the water; Holland is thus beginning to use natural predators to protect its crops from illness and harmful insects, especially in the horticultural sector.