The Bodele depression at the southern edge of the Sahara is a fearsome, forsaken place. Winds howl through the nearby Tebesti Mountains and Ennedi Plateau, picking up speed as they funnel into a parched wasteland nearly the size of California.
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Feed SubscriptionCan Matt Damon Bring Clean Water To Africa?
The inside story of Matt Damon's bold yet sane plan to use his celebrity and smarts to help attack one of the globe's great crises. Matt Damon, water warrior.
Read More »Can North Africa Light Up Europe with Solar Power?
HAMBURG, Germany -- Twenty-five years after Gerhard Knies conceived of powering Europe with the Sahara Desert's sun, the North Africa Solar project has grown into something considerably more than a mere mirage, but it's still less than a reality. Part of the plan is to erect a network of solar plants that generate electricity by concentrating the heat from sunlight to make electricity, generating 100 gigawatts or the equivalent of 100 large nuclear power plants
Read More »Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré Repurposes European Techniques For His Native Country
Photograph by David Heerde To build this school in Gando, Burkina Faso, Kéré used local materials designed to withstand weather conditions ranging from blazing sun to torrential showers. His schools now serve 500 children
Read More »Mountain bongo faces extinction after more than a century of decline
The world's largest forest antelope faces almost certain extinction in the wild in as few as 14 years if current population trends continue, according to a statement by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). Just 103 critically endangered mountain bongos (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci) remain in Kenya, the last country where the animals exist in the wild. They live in four scattered and isolated groups, the largest of which numbers 50 individuals.
Read More »How to excavate a human burial: Lessons from a dinosaur expert
SACRAMENTO--It is one of the most poignant scenes ever captured in the human fossil record--a woman and two children buried together some 5,300 years ago on a bed of flowers, holding hands. They lived by the shores of a shallow freshwater lake in what is now Niger, at a time when the Sahara was green
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