Land

Agora’s 2020 landscape photography contest delivers a spectacular assortment of images, from powerful displays of lightning, to several compelling shots of tiny human figures overwhelmed by the majesty of the natural environment.

Newly released maps of Zealandia, a massive sunken landmass, are revealing the topography of this underwater land in unprecedented detail. An interactive website has also been launched allowing users dynamic ways to explore the new data.

An aerial shot of Iceland’s ‘braided rivers’ has taken first place in the annual Pano Awards, a photography competition dedicated to showcasing the magnificence of panoramic photography. In its 10th year the contest received nearly 5000 entries.

According to the fossil record, plants migrated from the sea onto land about 420 million years ago, but that story is patchy at best. New research has wound back the evolutionary clock to determine that plants likely invaded dry land much earlier, about 500 million years ago.

​The Netherlands is a fairly small country, so to support a growing population, the Dutch people have historically expanded out to sea. To update that tradition, the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) is testing the concept of an artificial floating island.

As any high school student will tell you, Earth has seven continents. Now researchers from Australia and New Zealand are challenging this fundamental notion by proposing an eighth continent in the oceans east of Australia, dubbed Zealandia.