Cordillera del Paine by Martin Mergili, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Images such as the one above inspire scientists and nature lovers alike. This photograph, showing a Chilean landscape with elements representative of various Earth-science disciplines, is simply stunning. In a beautiful mix of shapes and colours, a quiet lake with floating icebergs appears tucked in between a roughed mountain in the background and a colourful double rainbow in the foreground.
The photographer, Martin Mergili of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, captured this inspiring scenery during a holiday trip a few years ago. The photo shows the eastern edge of the southern part of Cordillera del Paine, a “small but spectacular” mountain group in the Torres del Paine National Park, which is located in Chilean Patagonia almost 2,000 kilometres south of Santiago de Chile.
“The prominent peaks visible in the left portion of the image are the Cuernos del Paine,” Martin explains. “The rainbow in the foreground is not just decoration, it reflects the ever-changing weather patterns characteristic of that area. Even though it is located in the rainshade of the Cordillera at the edge of the semi-arid Patagonian lowlands, the westerlies bring a lot of moist air from the Pacific Ocean. The icebergs in the lake in the foreground (Lago Grey) originate from the large Glaciar Grey calving into the lake.”
More stunning images of this and other landscapes are available from Martin’s website.
Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to imaggeo, you retain full rights of use, since they are licenced and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
