plantedcity:

Infographic: ‘Our Dwindling Food Variety’

From National Geographic:

As we’ve come to depend on a handful of commercial varieties of fruits and vegetables, thousands of heirloom varieties have disappeared. It’s hard to know exactly how many have been lost over the past century, but a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International gave a clue to the scope of the problem. It compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct. More up-to-date studies are needed.

The infographic accompanies the feature article ‘Food Ark’, which looks at efforts to protect and enhance the global food supply. Also included with the article are sections on some amazing ‘Seeds Worth Saving’ and how to ‘Grow Your Own Heirlooms’.

scipsy:

Carnivorous Plants (scipsy)

nationalgeographicmagazine:

Cahokia
America’s Forgotten City
Placid in the morning mist, the plazas surrounding Monks Mound teemed with thousands during construction, which required 15 million baskets of soil. A large temple or palace was built on top, perhaps serving as center stage for religious ceremonies.

PURCHASE THIS PRINT

nationalgeographicmagazine:

Milky Way Shadows
Photo and caption by Alex Cherney
Far away from man-made lights the Port Campbell National Park (Victoria, Australia) is very dark on a moonless night. The stars in centre our Milky Way Galaxy are the most significant source of light which helped to create dark reflections on the water in the middle of the frame. To render the dark scene close to what I saw I took 7 consecutive 15-second exposures in under 2 minutes interval. The sky in the exposures was de-rotated to compensate for the rotation of Earth, then images were stacked together producing an image identical to a single exposure but with less digital noise.

(via moderndaylyon)