During BioBlitz 2013, nearly 3,000 volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and others embarked on a crash course in the biological diversity of the 23,000-acre Barataria Preserve of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in Marrero, La., across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter of New Orleans.

They formed teams to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible during the 24-hour event May 17 and 18. At least 458 species were identified, highlighting an activity that has been ongoing in south Louisiana for more than 300 years.

Early Explorers

“Seeking the Unknown: Natural History Observations in Louisiana 1698-1840,” a temporary exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection, highlights reports from early European explorers whose natural history observations kicked off a flurry of interest in the New World’s environment that lasted well into the 19th century.

The earliest European explorers in Louisiana were quick to recognize the biological diversity of its varied habitats, including grasslands, barrier islands, bottomland hardwood forests, freshwater swamps, and brackish marshes.

Click to Enlarge: In March, 1733, just after the Franco-Natchez War, Henri de Poilvain de Cresnay hand watercolored this map of French settlements, Native American villages, and trade routes from New Orleans to the Arkansas River. (Photo courtesy of the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aixen-Provence, France)

The first of these explorations had a practical rather than an academic focus. In a 1698 letter to the king of France, Louisiana’s founder, Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d’Iberville, declared that the territory would be a good source of lead, for armaments, and timber, for ships. Iberville is said to have sold 9,000 furs in New York after a second voyage to the Gulf Coast in 1700.

The Exhibits Up Close

One of the native creatures that Iberville spotted during his 1699 expedition was a brown pelican, later to become the emblem of the state of Louisiana. The HNOC exhibit includes a sketch of the skeleton of a brown pelican, drawn in pencil and ink in 1690 by Charles Plumier, later to be named botanist to King Louis XIV of France. Also on display is double-elephant folio illustration of a brown pelican by John James Audubon, who published The Birds of America in London between 1827 and 1838.

Reptiles are well represented in the exhibit as well, lead by a preserved 19th-century alligator snapping turtle, whose permanent residence is now in Paris. A smaller box turtle accompanies it, as do drawings of other characteristic critters of the Louisiana waterways.

This Emysaurus temminckii (alligator snapping turtle) was collected in Louisiana by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur in 1834. (Photo courtesy of the Laboratoire des Reptiles et Amphibiens, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris)

One of the New World plants to capture Europeans’ attention for its practical and commercial properties was an indigenous shrub, the wax myrtle, or myrica cerifera. The wax myrtle could be used as a source of bayberry candle wax, obtained by boiling the berries, skimming off the floating hydrocarbons, then purifying the remaining fats.

The HNOC exhibit includes a wax myrtle specimen pressed in Louisiana by Jean Prat in the 1740s. The exhibit also includes a 1752 letter in which Jean-Charles de Pradel complains to his brother about the challenge of dispersing the hordes of hungry birds that gobbled up the wax myrtle berries he cultivated at Monplaisir, a plantation in the area now known as McDonoghville opposite New Orleans on the Mississippi River.

Interest in the plants of the New World presented the challenge of transporting living specimens to Europe for study and propagation. The HNOC exhibit includes diagrams, created in 1785 and in 1798, of ingenious containers for transporting living plants.

Timeless Pursuit

Considering that naturalists have been exploring and recording Louisiana’s plants and animals for at least three centuries, it may seem like there can’t be much left to discover.

What BioBlitz showed this weekend though is that for all you may have studied an environment in the past, the ever-changing nature of nature means there are always new things to notice, new species taking root, and old species no longer to be found.

To get the full story, there will always been a place for events like BioBlitz, and exhibits like “Seeking the Unknown.” New Orleans is fortunate this year to have both.

Cathy Hughes is a New Orleans journalist and a volunteer at the Historic New Orleans Collection. She can be reached at cathy@hughes-wordsmith.com.

NEXT: Read all BioBlitz 2013 Blog Posts

In a fantastic event last night at the Seattle Aquarium, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle and Greenpeace’s Phil Radford announced the Bering Sea Canyons as the official 19th Hope Spot. The event attracted a large turnout and impassioned speeches in defense of the new Hope Spot. Moreover, a bonafide airship was in play!

The Bering Sea isn’t just chilly…it’s also super cool: these 770,000 square miles (1,994,000 square kilometers) of tempestuous waters off the coast of Alaska and Siberia are home to immense populations of fish, seabirds, marine mammals, and ancient corals, as well as the Bering Sea Canyons, the largest and deepest submarine canyons in the world, even larger than the Grand Canyon.

The rich ecosystem has supported indigenous tribes for thousands of years and currently provides over half the seafood caught in the United States.

Sylvia Earle announces the designation of a new “Hope Spot” in the Bering Sea.

If half the total U.S. catch sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Sadly, under this enormous commercial pressure, the Bering Sea is in decline. Since the 1960’s, the region has seen steep declines in top predators — i.e. whales, sea lions, seals — with some populations dipping by over 80 percent of historic levels. Moreover, trawling nets are decimating ancient corals and sponges in the deep canyons, which are critical to the ecosystem and are hundreds to thousands of years old.

The Bering Sea was a rich ecosystem of harmony, and now it faces collapse due to the pressures of industrial fishing. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council are the stewards of these precious waters and, as such, they must protect sensitive habitats so the Bering Sea can continue to be a flourishing ocean ecosystem into the future. With the global ocean in a general decline, the preservation of the Bering Sea as a Marine Protected Area — or Hope Spot — is critical.

A Greenpeace airship plies the skies.

Please join your voice in this cause. Sign the Greenpeace petition to help protect the Bering Sea Canyons and reach out to support in any way you can.

As a member of the Natural Leaders Network, I am dedicated to empowering a worldwide movement to strengthen the bond between children and nature. At the most basic level, this means inviting all kids – regardless of gender, race, household income or geographic location – into nature as a place to play, respect, and explore without fear.

When I was a kid, my invitation arrived via my subscription to National Geographic Magazine. Flipping through the pages each month, I soaked up the places, creatures, and cultures, and dreamed that some day, when I grew up, I would write for the magazine.

This past weekend, I lived out a small part of that childhood fantasy conducting an aquatic invertebrate species inventory in collaboration with scientists and National Geographic ambassadors at the 2013 BioBlitz in Jean Lafitte National Historic Park.

BioBlitz demonstrates to kids that they are not only welcome to enjoy natural places but can actively participate in exploring and protecting these habitats. (Photo by Veronica Del Bianco)

Traveling along the bayou in an aluminum platoon boat, we retrieved samples with dip nets and sweat. Darting Whirligig Beetles, wide-eyed Mayfly larvae, camouflaged water stick insects, and their friends filled our containers. We squinted to see them swimming around because despite being called “macro invertebrates,” aquatic invertebrates are actually very small.

Today’s adventure was like many field trips I have conducted over the last decade as an environmental educator in New Orleans, except for one major difference; this was also serious science. Our effort today was part of something greater than our individual actions alone. We helped expand the park’s official species list and understanding of its biodiversity.

I believe that encouraging participation in citizen science experiences like BioBlitz is the next logical step in strengthening the bond between children and nature. It demonstrates to kids, their families, and their educators, that they are not only welcome to enjoy natural places but can actively participate in exploring and protecting these habitats. Not “someday” when they are grown-ups, but today.

NEXT: Read all BioBlitz 2013 Blog Posts

11:27 a.m.

Bucci: Winning question: Because the earth bulges at the equator, which mountain peak on the earth is farthest from the earth’s center?

Kramer: New Host Announcement: Soledad O’Brien. Her first name is also a town in California, which perhaps makes her uniquely qualified for the role.

11:25 a.m.

Howard: Ricky got third just like me in the rehearsal. I played him in the rehearsal. Poetic?

11:24 a.m.

Kramer: After many grueling rounds testing geographic knowledge about lions in Botswana, mountain ranges in Asia and port cities in England, 12-year-old Sathwik Karnik from Massachusetts was named the winner of the 25^th Annual National Geography Bee (pictured, with penguin).

Karnik, a native of Norfolk, south of Boston, is a 7^th grader at King Philip Regional Middle School. He’ll take home the spoils of the Bee prize: a $25,000 college scholarship, an all-expenses paid trip to the Galapagos Islands, and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society. Competitors also get the chance to compete on behalf of the United States in an International geographic competition.

Nearly 5 million students started in the Geography Bee. After state and local competitions, those millions were whittled down to the top 54, and then the 10. Three of the finalists are siblings of former finalists – including Karnik, whose brother has participated in the Bee.

11:23 a.m.

Howard: Sathwik has a big grin as he writes the final answer, wins 5 to 4.

11:18 a.m.

Bucci: Conrad needs to get this next question right and Sathwik has to miss it in order for Conrad to stay.

11:17 a.m.

Kramer: Best of five between Sathwik and Conrad. So far we’re tied at 1-1.

11:13 a.m.

Kramer: Watching video montage of contestants. Things I have learned: The National Mall is bigger than Vatican City; the shortest place name in the word is A (it’s a village between Norway and Sweden); there’s a YOLO Street (in Kinshasa)!; the world’s shortest river is in Oregon.

Howard:

Howard: In contestant highlight video, kid from Minnesota said his state is known by many for the mall of America for shopping.

11:07 a.m.

Illinois — Conrad Oberhaus is a 13-year-old 7th grader at Daniel Wright Junior High School in Lincolnshire, a suburb of Chicago. He was also in the 2012 Bee. He has won multiple presidential physical fitness awards and state and national chess awards. He earned a black belt in tae kwon do when he was 6.

11:03 a.m.

Kramer: Down to the final two — Massachusetts (24 points) and Illinois (21 points)

11:01 a.m.

Kramer: We’re down to the final four. The stage has been reconfigured so they’re all sitting in the same row.

Howard: Alex told to the audience not to say, whisper, or mouth any answers. As if that’s going to happen, he jokes. Most of you can’t even find Detroit.

10:56 a.m.

Kramer: Four contestants remain. All of the females have been eliminated. Illinois, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Virginia remain. They’re all guys. Youngest contestant Ricky Uppaluri is still on the stage. He just turned 11 last week.

10:53 a.m.

Kramer: Six contestants remain. They’re asked to identify land masses on zoomed-in maps. It’s tough to identify any of these islands — particularly without other countries around them.

Bucci: If they can name the island when the map is at the most “zoomed in,” they get three points. Each time they zoom out the question is worth less. Asha Jain IDs Wrangel Island for 1 point. Virginia contestant names Socotra. Conrad from Illinois gets Costa Rica on the first try to big applause and 3 points.

10:51 a.m.

Kramer: There’s a penguin on the stage. It has a strange mating call. It’s currently silent.

10:49 a.m.

Howard: Neelam and Tuvya exit. Audience groans.

10:45 a.m.

Howard: Conrad had the cities question I had in the staff Bee: Putting Prague, Budapest, Zagreb in order from north to south. He got it right: Prague, Budapest, Zagreb. So did I. I got the bonus for which has the largest population (Budapest) but he missed it.

10:44 a.m.

Howard: Neelam was asked to place Iran, Yemen, Egypt  in order of decreasing geographic size. Answer: Iran, Egypt, Yemen. She was right but missed the bonus: Which country has the highest population density? It’s Egypt, she said Iran.

Sathwik surges ahead to 19 points, gettng his lakes in order and the bonus question.

Bucci: Sathwik is from Massachusetts. As I am from Boston I am superexcited.

10:43 a.m.

Howard: Shawn Cartwright came out to demonstrate tai chi. The contestants were asked which Chinese province was the source of the oldest form of tai chi, invented by the Chen family. Answer: Henan. Three got it. Conrad got the 1 point bonus. Just ahead, the next elimination…

Kramer: Contestants are asked to place countries in order, in terms of land area, population density, and other statistics. I am realizing how much I do not know about the world.

10:38 a.m.

Kramer:  Contestant from California just received question about California. Audience laughs.

Brian Howard: All but 2 students got Yucatan peninsula right: the peninsula near the Mesoamerican reef. Conrad got the question I had missed: the Pearl Islands are in what large gulf? Answer: gulf of panama.

10:32 a.m.

New round of questions, involving National Geographic Expeditions. Eight contestants remain.

10:23 a.m.

Questions are getting much harder. This round involves looking at pictures of Google Earth and then answering questions about port cities.

10:20 a.m.

Calfornia’s contestant participates in model UN. He also enjoys cross-country running, baseball statistics, and international affairs.

The contestant from Illinois has had a black belt since he was 6. He started when he was 3.

Georgia’s contestant, newly 11, had a perfect score in the prelims. At one point in his life, he was chased by a monkey, who ripped his pants off. Also, he collects globes.

Michigan’s champ is a story writer who has participated in National Novel Writing Month. (That means she wrote 50,000 words in one month.)

Virginia’s contestant just returned from Costa Rica, where he ate live termites, which apparently “don’t taste like anything.” Trebek confesses that this “grosses him out.”

10:05 a.m.

A boa constrictor was just brought out on the stage. I don’t know what question is being asked because I am now trembling under my seat.

10:03 a.m.

Compared to these preteens, I feel like I know nothing about the world. We’ve just gotten through a round of explorer-related questions. I think I knew the answers to 2 of them.

9:59 a.m.

9:56 a.m.

We start off with some border questions. The first one: What country is bordered by Burkina Faso and Libya? Neelam Sandhu of New Hampshire answers correctly: Niger.

The first round finishes off with no incorrect answers.

Second round: explorer questions!

9:52 a.m.

9:48 a.m.

9:34 a.m.

Praise for Mary Lee Elden and Alex Trebek, who are both leaving the Bee after 25 years. Elden directed and founded the Bee; Trebek, of course, is the host of both Jeopardy and the Bee

9:25 a.m.

The audience is beginning to fill into the auditorium. The 10 finalists on stage are:

Neelam Sandhu – New Hampshire

Harish Palani – Oregon

Pranit Nanda – Colorado

Sathwik Karnik – Massachusetts

Akhil Rekulapelli – Virginia

Asha Jain – Wisconsin

Conrad Oberhaus – Illinois

Ricky Uppaluri – Georgia

Neha Middela – Michigan

Tuvya Bergson-Michelson – California

The massive tornado that ripped through Oklahoma on Monday has been chronicled on video by news outlets, storm chasers, and shaken survivors. Here are some of the most compelling clips, as chosen by National Geographic’s video editors. (Related: “Oklahoma Tornado: Why So Destructive, Unpredictable?”)

This video catches the tornado just as it’s forming near Newcastle, Oklahoma. In the background, tinny warnings from the car’s radio urge people to seek shelter. (Also see a video showing the birth of a tornado in Kansas.)

Storm chasers David Demko and Heidi Farrar got caught in the debris surrounding the tornado, now a giant storm, before it destroyed an elementary school and killed at least 24 in the town of Moore. Demko’s remark, “This is worse than Joplin,” refers to the deadly 2011 tornado that killed 158 people in Joplin, Missouri.

This clip offers a much closer encounter. As the tornado passes directly above his storm shelter, Charles Gafford III thrusts his phone through a gap to capture video of the storm’s whirling, debris-filled maw. (That’s a car tire blowing past at 00:36).

How did it feel to climb from safety into the wreckage of that storm? In this short video, a man witnesses an obliterated landscape when he leaves a shelter where he and others had weathered the tornado. (See more pictures of the Oklahoma tornado.)

Here, storm chasers capture the tornado passing close to a high school. The giant storm, wreathed in flying debris, tears the roof off a distant building (00:36) and gradually dominates the skyline.

Other videos show us miracles amid the wreckage. The Oklahoman captured a mother’s tearful reunion with her first-grade son, a student at the elementary school destroyed by the tornado.

In an on-camera interview with CBS, a woman who survived the tornado is unexpectedly reunited with her missing dog, spotted under some debris by a member of the CBS production crew. (The reunion happens at 01:28.)

Rubble from a destroyed neighborhood is seen May 21 in Moore, Oklahoma. Photograph by Brennan Linsley, AP

Tell us—what other videos have you seen of the Oklahoma tornado?

Traditional fishing on Lake Pátzcuaro in Mexico. Photograph by Régis Lachaume, Wikimedia Commons

By Andreas Merkl, President, Ocean Conservancy

Smart fisheries management is a great place to start a conversation about putting the ocean at the center of the world’s biggest challenges.  This is because the most profitable type of fishing is sustainable fishing – better management helps fishermen and the ocean at the same time.

Sustainable fishing means keeping enough fish in the water to reproduce and ensure a bountiful catch in the future. It’s a balancing act, but sustainable fisheries are in everyone’s best interest – from fishermen to distributors to gear manufacturers to retailers to consumers. If you’re a fisherman and you want to pass on your traditions to the next generation, or you want to be able to make good money 10 years from now, the most profitable way to fish is sustainably.

Unfortunately, overfishing due to poor fisheries management remains a global problem that threatens ecosystem health and human survival. For example, without enough forage fish—small fish like anchovies, sardines, and squid—the larger predators, like tuna, that feed on them will start to disappear as well.

That matters because we are facing a future with 9 billion people on the planet, and with that future comes huge concerns for food security.  There is no way we can sustainably provide protein to that many people without fixing fisheries management around the world.

The benefits of good fisheries management go beyond food security.  It turns out that many fisheries produce protein much more efficiently than land – after all, fish do not have to fight gravity.  Cows, chickens, and pigs are terribly inefficient protein sources, and their production generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trains, and airplanes in the world.  So if recovering fisheries can take some of the protein production pressure off the land, that could have major implications for climate change, ocean acidification, and pollution.

The good news is that we’ve seen a real shift in the state of fishing in the world.  The United States is a shining example of this work, thanks to the success of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs marine fisheries management and has helped us turn the corner on ending overfishing and recover a record number of depleted fish populations over the past two years. Ocean Conservancy and Pew Charitable Trusts have just released a joint report about the successes fishermen are seeing thanks to these management policies.

According to a recent fisheries report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the catch by American fishermen has reached a 14-year high—and the evidence can be seen in the recovery of signature species like red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico and lingcod on the Pacific Coast.

Beyond U.S. waters, more work needs to be done. Internationally managed open-ocean fisheries need to adopt and implement proven fishery management  strategies. Developing countries need to embrace modern management techniques to avoid depleting their fish populations; it simply makes economic sense.  We now have the analytical tools to apply these techniques at relatively low costs; for example, we can rely on advanced statistical techniques to get a better sense of the health of current stocks, and we can use standardized approaches to plan for their recovery.

To be successful, we need to think beyond the one fish we are trying to catch today, and instead focus on finding smart ways to sustain fish up and down the food chain, and the people who will depend on them for their lives and livelihoods.

A stretch of open water in the wetlands of the Mobile Delta. Photograph courtesy of the Ocean Foundation

By Mark J. Spalding, President, The Ocean Foundation

One recent Monday, I got to spend the day doing something outside, not in a conference room, not in my office, just out in one of North America’s great natural wonders.

My day began at 7, when the executive director of the Mobile Botanical Gardens, Bill Finch, picked me up at my hotel in Mobile, Alabama. With John Adornato, head of the Sun Coast region of the National Parks Conservation Association, we headed out to the Brookleigh Aeroplex to meet Skip Tonsmeire, a volunteer pilot with SouthWings.

Skip took us up in his Cessna T210 for a trip up the Tensaw Delta. Directly north of Mobile Bay, within a broad river valley that leads northward to the confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers, lies a vast region of wetlands known by various names, including the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the Mobile Delta, or simply “the Delta.”

The Mobile Delta is a premier place to watch coastal birds. Photograph courtesy of the Ocean Foundation

This region is home to some of the most diverse wildlife and landscapes in Alabama, and indeed in the entire United States.

We leave Mobile, its tall buildings and towering port cranes, behind quickly. From the air, the Delta is, at this time of year, a kaleidoscope of shades of green cut through by wide swaths of water that shift and change with season and rainfall. Bill Finch has explored the Delta on foot, by water, and in the air for decades. Many share his passion, and we are fortunate to have such an expert on board for the tour.

As we fly, Finch points out landmarks that represent centuries of the human relationship with its rich, diverse habitat and the many resources—from recreation to wild rice, to fish, to building materials—that the Delta continues to provide. Now in the late spring, the fresh green of emerging growth glows emerald beneath us, punctuated by vacated industrial sites of failed human endeavors.

Group Tour on the Water

After our flight, we join the larger group that is in Mobile to discuss the feasibility of protecting the natural landscapes and the recreational opportunities that the Delta presents. Such protections could bring all kinds of recreational visitors to the region—kayakers, hunters, fishermen, and other nature lovers—and preserve the unique and breathtaking sweeps of the Delta landscape. With TOF project coordinator Devon Coleman, we join other members of the NPCA staff, representatives from Mobile Baykeeper, the Walton Family Foundation, the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, the Sybil H. Smith Charitable Trust, and the Munson Foundation to prepare for our afternoon on the water.

Ray Mayhew and Bryan Pape, president and past president of the Mobile Baykeeper board, have volunteered their time to drive the boats for our tour on this beautiful day. Their love of the Delta is apparent even before we leave the dock—it’s clear that both of them consider it a pleasure, not a sacrifice, to be out here on the water with us.

Our first stop will be to go visit the wet open sweep of lilies, rice, and the invasive alligator weed. As we motor into a side creek, alligators slide off the banks into the water. We clamber out onto the bank and sink immediately up to our ankles in water. The vegetation is thigh high and lush. Stands of Delta lily are in full bloom, there is iris and arrow arum, and we even spy a tiny frog on its stalk.

Next, we head for Three-Mile Creek, a blackwater stream lined with cypress, bay, and sweeps of wild rice. We startle a great white egret as we come around the bend. Here and there, we stop and turn off the engines so we can listen. The scent of native wild wisteria wafts across us and dragonflies buzz round. Hard to envision these two-inch aerial acrobats as one of nature’s most successful predators—successfully snatching their prey out of the air more than 90 percent of the time.

Delta Threats

However, the Delta’s story is not all light, water, critters, trees, and grasses. Red and white for sale signs along the bluff signal the impending loss of dozens of acres of forests, a civil war encampment, and ancient human community sites. The acreage is adjacent to part of Historic Blakeley State Park, a city that once competed with Mobile in size and status. All that remains today are gravestones, a few ruins, and traces of old streets. The site of Blakeley had been the location of important settlements for thousands of years. Native Americans settled here more than 4,000 years ago to hunt, fish, and gather food from the rich delta.

The state park is a wonder in and of itself, sitting on the eastern edge of the Delta, it boasts a quarter mile boardwalk from which visitors can fish or watch for birds as the park is a key stop on the Alabama Coastal Birding Trail. It seems a shame that one day, visitors might come up a river where the scale of human development is so different from the handful of little cabins on stilts adjacent to the landing a half mile or so upstream.

Touring the delta around Mobile Bay. Photograph courtesy of the Ocean Foundation

We find the narrow entrance to Burns Lake. I was expecting that we would come around the bend and there would be a stretch of big open water—like other lakes we can all envision. But Burns Lake is secretive, its open water twists and winds through hardwoods and shrubs. Here we have a unique commingling of species that naturally occur here together whose normal range is far away. Upland and wetland, water lilies and cypress, trees of states further north, and trees best known in Puerto Rico in a crazy collision of perfect habitats for all.

The Delta is a dynamic, changing landscape, rich in life, and vulnerable to shortsighted uses by humans, and we know that we can all share in creating the legacy for future generations to enjoy it in diverse and meaningful ways.

The footage was shot by a pioneering British cinematographer named Claude Friese-Greene, as the final segment of a 26-part travelogue of the British countryside he had been working on since 1924.

His project was to have been called The Open Road and was designed to promote the color film process his late father, William, had been working on since 1911 (and which he had continue to develop himself after his father’s death in 1921.) Their system had a revolving disc in front of the shutter that alternately exposed frames of standard black-and-white film through a red and then a yellowish-white filter. Later, after the film was developed, these alternate frames would be hand-tinted with red and cyan dyes and projected at 32 frames per second. Although the footage flickered heavily, it did indeed render color images.

Excited by the prospect of using the newly patented “all-British Friese-Greene Natural Colour Process,” the son founded Spectrum Films, and with his chauffeur-cum-assistant Robin Haworth-Booth set off in a motor car in 1924 to make The Open Road , a travelogue of the British countryside and villages. The idea was that these 10-minute segments would be shown before the main feature at cinemas and hopefully generate public interest and create a demand for more.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. With the exception of a showing of the first nine segments at a trade show in November 1925, none of The Open Road is believed to have been shown in theaters at the time or ever distributed. The flickering footage had a way of giving viewers headaches. And technically and visually, the “Natural Colour Process” was outclassed by the superior Technicolor process, which had been in development since 1916 and was already being used to good effect in America. The Open Road died before it could be released.

Friese-Greene went on to enjoy a successful film-making career but his patented color process was largely forgotten. In the years after his death in 1943 his original nitrate negatives of The Open Road – all 25,000 feet of them – were donated to Britain’s National Film and Television Archive.

And there the story of a long-ago dream and a 1920s road trip through the British countryside might have ended but for an extraordinary digital reconstruction of an hours’ worth of Friese-Greene’s original by a team of technicians at the British Film Institute – a two-year effort that combined cutting-edge digital technology with fragile 1920s negatives.

“It was more of a reinterpretation than a true reconstruction,” says Kieron Webb, the Film Conservation Manager at the British Film Institute who oversaw the project. “What we wanted to do was capture Friese-Greene’s original vision and colors as faithfully as possible, but without the migraine-inducing flicker.”

That proved to be a painstaking challenge. First a set of positives had to be made from Friese-Greene’s original negatives, fragile after nearly 90 years. These were then scanned. Next the frames were digitally separated into those that had been shot through the red filter and those shot through the yellowish white. Finally, software was used to create new frames for the film based on whatever motion was going on in the picture—a sophisticated bit of computerised legerdemain, with the computer working out the speed and direction of the motion it sensed in the footage. These additional frames helped smooth the overall viewing and reduced the jerky, head-ache inducing flicker.

And so it still is. Two years of work were required to recreate an hour of Claude Friese-Greene’s original vision – five minutes of which have been capturing the attention of You Tube aficionados. “I think we got the colors pretty much as he saw them,” says Webb. “There is still a bit of ghosting [a faint echo of a moving image, such as a raised arm or a person walking through the crowd]. But I don’t mind it. It kind of adds to the sense of looking back in time. We could probably have cleaned that up but this is supposed to be Claude Friese-Greene’s film, not ours.”

Is this even possible? NG staffer Melody Kramer caught up with Dr. David Ferguson, (@volcanotweet) a volcanologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University to ask him about the possible ramifications of stopping liquid hot magma in its tracks.

Spock performs his mission while standing on a tiny platform inside the volcano, surrounded by liquid magma. Would a non-half-Vulcan be able to survive standing on a platform in the middle of an active volcano?

That lava would be something like 1100-1200 degrees Celsius. You’ve seen footage of people in silver suits next to lava fields. Outside of those suits, it would be far too hot. And one other thing you realize if you’re near lava is that it really stinks. There’s all sorts of noxious gases. I can’t speak for Spock, but without any kind of protective clothing and breathing devices, a human probably wouldn’t be able to survive.

Spock stopped the volcano with a “cold fusion device.”  Is it possible to drop something in a volcano that would stop it from erupting?

There are examples of people who have tried to stop lava flows from harming anyone by dropping bombs on them. In the 1930s and 1940s in Hawaii, they tried to bomb some lava flows. They also tried this in Italy, at Mount Etna in 1992.

What’s the thought process behind bombing the lava flows?

When the lava erupts, it hardens around itself and forms a tube. The lava inside the tube is therefore insulated and can flow for several kilometers. So the thought was that if you drop a bomb on a lava tube, the bomb would smash the insulated tube and cool the lava.

Could anything bad happen as a result of bombing a volcano directly?

If you were to drop a bomb on a volcano, the best case scenario is nothing would happen. The worst, of course, is that the volcano would erupt. If you were to bomb a volcano in the right way, you would basically do the work for it, by fracturing the volcanic rock and allowing magma to escape.

But scientists don’t need to use bombs to destroy lava flows. I’m thinking of Eldfell in Iceland, which threatened a village in 1973. Folks there pumped sea water directly onto the advancing lava flow and successfully saved a harbor from being destroyed. Why is sea water so effective?

The idea is to cool down the lava. If you cool it down, it stops flowing because it hardens. They sprayed the front of the lava flow to make it solidify and then the rest of the lava piled up behind it. It was successful. The lava was advancing on this town and they were able to stop it.

Do we have anything more advanced than sea water to protect us from advancing lava flows?

The best thing to do is to try and predict where lava will go and not build your house there. But if you do have a house there, the best case scenario would be to divert the flow.

How does that work?

You can build large walls from Earth and try to influence the way the lava is flowing. This works for places where sea water doesn’t work. With sea water, you need a large reservoir—and you need a pump that can pump thousands of meters a second. That’s why most attempts to mitigate hazards try to predict when and where they happen.

How much advance notice do we have before a volcano erupts?

Most volcanoes have a waking up period of weeks to months before they erupt. As magma moves underground, it fractures rocks that cause small earthquakes. As a volcano approaches eruption, the number of earthquakes increase. And as new magma increases, the surface of the volcano wells up. You can measure the swelling of the volcanoes using GPS technology.

So are there any scientists actively working to stop volcanoes?

That’s pure fiction. It would just be unthinkable, really, to be honest. The way to stop it would be to slowly release the pressure. The only conceivable way is to drill down to release pressure but that would be, practically speaking, impossible. It’d be a tiny pin prick in a massive magma chamber. The scale of these things makes it inconceivable.

Does anyone ever mistake you for a Vulcanologist?

I get that joke a lot, yes.

A vole ladder is installed. Photograph courtesy Canal & River Trust

One conservation group is testing, for the first time ever, wooden ladders to expand the habitat of endangered water voles in London. The Canal and River Trust hopes that the “superhighways”—designed to guide the voles over the tall edges of the Grand Union Canal—will help an isolated group venture beyond the small pond they live in and into the canal, where they can nest in and feed on new man-made islands. If successful, more ladders will be installed throughout London to encourage the voles to make more use of the canals. Then the city’s fragmented vole populations can connect, mate, and improve their genetic diversity.

Here are five other ways that man-made structures help animals avoid obstacles to get to the other side.

—Linda Poon

Crabs cross a road using a “crab bridge” on Christmas Island. Photograph courtesy Max Orchard, Parks Australia

Crab Bridges and Tunnels

Christmas Island

On Australia’s Christmas Island, around 50 million red crabs make their way out of the rain forest each year during the migration season in mid-October, marching slowly across the island’s roads to reach their breeding ground near the sea. But heavy traffic crushes an estimated 500,000 adult and young crabs every year. Since 1995, the government has built bridges and installed nearly 40 tunnels, in addition to closing certain parts of the road, to reduce the alarming death toll, according to Parks Australia. Seven and a half miles (12 kilometers) of aluminum wall line the edge of the roads to funnel the crabs into the tunnels and fenced overpasses during their migration. Not only have they saved thousands of crabs each year, but the overpasses have also become a popular tourist attraction. (Watch millions of red crab babies hatch and move inland.)

Elephants exit Africa’s first dedicated elephant underpass near Mt. Kenya. Photograph by Jason Straziuso, AP

Elephant Underpass

Kenya

As part of the larger effort to restore the historic migration route used by African elephants in northern Kenya, conservationists built an underpass beneath the busy Nanyuki-Meru road in 2010 so the large mammals could safely move between isolated areas without angering locals by walking through the fences and destroying their crops. The project, the first of its kind in Kenya, has been successful. Hundreds of elephants have been spotted walking through it, chief conservation officer Geoffrey Chege of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy told National Geographic in 2012.

Storm Drains

Maryland

What was originally meant to channel water under the highway has often become a passageway for wildlife throughout the country. Professor J. Edward Gates and his team at theUniversity of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science placed infrared cameras inside nearly 300 storm drains and tunnels in Maryland; measurements range from 2 feet (3.2 kilometers) to 15 feet (24 kilometers) around. The goal was to learn what species use the drains to cross highways. The cameras revealed that raccoons, Virginia opossums, and larger animals like white-tailed deer have waded through the water to get to the other side of the road. Gates believed that many of the animals may have discovered the culverts while looking for food.

A wildlife crossing over Highway A50. Photograph from Photontrappist/Alamy

Highway A50

Netherlands

Among the most impressive and visually stunning overpasses made just for animals is the one built over Highway A50—a lush green bridge covered with vegetation to help endangered wildlife like the badger, deer, and wild boar cross the road from one part of its habitat to another. The bridge is one of 600 wildlife crossings in the Netherlands, home to the world’s largest overpass, which runs half a mile (800 meters) across a highway, railroad, and golf course.

A dead salamander on a road (file image). Photograph by Roger Eritja, Alamy

Salamander Tunnels

Massachusetts

In 1988 in Amherst, Massachusetts, 50 people came out in the rain to watch the opening of a salamander tunnel. One salamander showed up, ignored the tunnel, and headed straight for the road. Today, that same tunnel, built under Henry Street, has become an important passageway in the spring, when spotted salamanders make their annual trek across the road to mate in the vernal pools on the other side. Across the country, conservation groups in Santa Rosa, California, employed the same method to give the endangered tiger salamander a safe path to its breeding grounds.