National Geographic MagazineWallpapers 1° Trimestre 2012[46 foto]

National Geographic Magazine Gennaio 2012

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Dogsled Patrol " National Geographic January 2012 Setting out in the middle of winter, a dogsled team patrols northeastern Greenland.

Photograph by David Coventry From " Panama Gold " National Geographic January 2012 The personal treasures of a chief include a seahorse pendant about three inches tall, ear ornaments, part of a breastplate, a necklace, and plaques. All were buried in a bag studded with the surrounding stone beads, which scattered as the fibers decayed.

Photograph by Lynn Johnson From " Land Mines " National Geographic January 2012 To reach the schoolyard outhouse in O Khmum, a boy takes a safe path between buildings. Students must take the path because there are suspected minefields around the school in the area where the shrubs and trees start.

Photograph by William Albert Allard From " Northern Montana " National Geographic January 2012 Two sorrels belonging to Buster and Helen Brown have gone AWOL in the snow.

Photograph by Daniel Selmeczi, Steve Bloom Images From " Visions of Earth " National Geographic January 2012 Indonesia—A flurry of filaments helps camouflage the striated frogfish, a bottom dwelling predator often found in warm, weedy waters. Like its anglerfish relatives, it also employs a dangling lure to seduce fish and other prey into its lair—and gaping mouth.

Photograph by David Coventry From " Panama Gold " National Geographic January 2012 Near the cemetery at El Caño, stone monoliths rise to more than six feet. War captives may have been lashed to them before being sacrificed and buried with chiefs during funerals that involved days of feasting and dancing.

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Dogsled Patrol " National Geographic January 2012 The Danish flag flaps on the sled as the dogs huff across a flat and frozen sea near Station Nord. The patrollers must lead their team, and in whiteout conditions that often means relying on GPS and a compass.

Photograph by William Albert Allard From " Northern Montana " National Geographic January 2012 Anna Scherlie, from North Dakota, filed a claim on a homestead near Turner in 1913. She lived alone in this one-room shack, without plumbing or electricity, until 1967.

National Geographic Magazine Febbraio 2012

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Rhodesian ridgeback

Photograph by Gerd Ludwig From " Astana, Kazakhstan " National Geographic February 2012 Floral flourishes decorate Nurzhol Boulevard, or "Radiant Path."

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Poodle

Photograph by Richard Barnes From " Vermilion Cliffs " National Geographic February 2012 A sandstone formation in White Pocket is almost liquid in its coloring.

Photograph by J.L. Klein and M.L.Hubert, Biosphere From " Visions of Earth " National Geographic February 2012 France—On a bright summer morning a captive-bred male harvest mouse perches acrobatically in an Alsace wheat field. This species—the smallest European rodent—boasts a prehensile tail and builds a round nest that resembles a bird's.

Photograph by John Stanmeyer From " Tsunami Science " National Geographic February 2012 Oregon Offshore lies a fault that in centuries past has triggered large earthquakes—and tsunamis that swamped the coast. These houses at Cannon Beach sit just inside an evacuation zone based on a worst-case scenario. As the world's coasts get more crowded, geologists are finding that tsunamis occur more often than once thought.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Bloodhound (left), German shorthaired pointer (center), and Sussex spaniel

Photograph by Richard Barnes From " Vermilion Cliffs " National Geographic February 2012 Sinuous lines of color swirl through the Wave, the monument's most famous landform. Flash floods carved this passage through petrified sand dunes, exposing the iron-rich bands.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Afghan hound

Photograph by Gerd Ludwig From " Astana, Kazakhstan " National Geographic February 2012 The Baiterek, towering over Astana's central promenade, flares green against a dappled evening sky. Intended as a symbol of the new capital, the 318-foot monument evokes a giant tree with a golden egg in its branches. In the Kazakh myth of Samruk, a sacred bird lays a golden egg in the branches of a poplar each year.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Pembroke Welsh corgi (left) and Cardigan Welsh corgi

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Manny, an Afghan hound, is among the more elegant examples of canine diversity. The centuries of breeding that produced such diversity in dogs also created isolated genetic populations that are helping scientists understand human diseases. "We're the people doing the genetics," says one researcher. "But breeders have done all the fieldwork."

Photograph by Richard Barnes From " Vermilion Cliffs " National Geographic February 2012 Against a twilight sky, a sandstone edifice in White Pocket catches the day's last warmth.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Great Dane

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Originally bred as guard dogs, Tibetan mastiffs like Midas, a Westminster finalist from Lubbock, Texas, can top 150 pounds. They are highly protective of their owners—an impulse that, along with most other dog behaviors, remains a genetic mystery.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Pomeranian

Photograph by Kevin Frayer, AP Images From " Visions of Earth " National Geographic February 2012 Afghanistan—On drought-pocked earth near Marjah, in the restive Helmand Province, a lone shepherd leads his sheep through a mud wall's gap. Scenes of pastoral grace persist in this agriculturally intensive country, despite strife, insecurity, and dire food shortages.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Chinese crested

Photograph by Richard Barnes From " Vermilion Cliffs " National Geographic February 2012 Miniature lakes reflect the sky in White Pocket, one of the geological spectacles on the Paria Plateau. Over the eons, groundwater has leached the color out of the Navajo sandstone here, and the weather has broken its surface into irregular polygons.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 English setter (left), Irish setter (center), and Gordon setter

Photograph by Richard Barnes From " Vermilion Cliffs " National Geographic February 2012 Welcome to the so-called Honeymoon Trail. Threading the hem of the Paria Plateau, Highway 89A partly traces a route followed by 18th-century Franciscan explorers, and by Mormons on their way to St. George, Utah, often to be married.

Photograph by Robert Clark From " How to Build a Dog " National Geographic February 2012 Italian greyhound

National Geographic Magazine Marzo 2012

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Glacial Rocks " National Geographic March 2012 Looking as if it fell from the sky, a 40-ton erratic stands on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State. Such boulders are sometimes called rubbing stones because bison scratched up against them.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak From " Arabian Seas " National Geographic March 2012 In winter young whale sharks come to feed on plankton in the nutrient-rich waters of the Gulf of Tadjoura, off the arid coast of Djibouti. The world's largest fish—weighing more than an elephant—is becoming a symbol of Arabia's bountiful, but largely unprotected, marine heritage.

Photograph by Brent Stirton From " Rhino Wars " National Geographic March 2012 A rhinoceros stands on a hillside in KwaZulu-Natal Province.

Photograph by Ed Kashi From " Marseille " National Geographic March 2012 Marseille, a port city since 600 B.C., has offered refuge to wave upon wave of immigrants. The Mediterranean metropolis of more than 850,000 is home to 100,000 foreigners from Algeria, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and beyond.

Photograph by Joel Sartore From " Visions of Earth " National Geographic March 2012 Uganda—On a lodge terrace in Queen Elizabeth National Park, a photographer's butter and roll prove irresistible to the local lunchtime crowd. East Africa is home to many species of weaverbirds, known for their skill in building nests.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak From " Arabian Seas " National Geographic March 2012 Rarely visited, the reefs off Saudi Arabia in the northern Red Sea are some of the most undisturbed in the region. Sunlight penetrates deep into the clear waters, enabling lush gardens of corals to flourish along these wave-washed coasts.

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Glacial Rocks " National Geographic March 2012 Yeager Rock (at right), in north central Washington State, helped geologists map how far south the ice sheet pushed—and provided a surface where local graduates could paint important dates.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak From " Arabian Seas " National Geographic March 2012 A relic of the Iran-Iraq war, this oil tanker was scuttled near the Kuwait-Iraq border on Saddam Hussein's orders, to block access by sea to southern Iraq. Kuwaiti authorities are reluctant to remove the vessel for fear of damaging the wetlands of nearby Bubiyan Island, an important fish nursery and seabird breeding ground.

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Glacial Rocks " National Geographic March 2012 The erratic in the foreground tumbled from a mountainside onto Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Sliding downhill, sometimes two feet a day, the ice will eventually crumble, dumping its rider into Mendenhall Lake.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak From " Arabian Seas " National Geographic March 2012 The ordeal of nesting over for another year, a loggerhead turtle paddles into the surf of Oman's Masira Island. The island is a critical breeding area for this endangered species. As the turtles return to the sea, they must evade a gantlet of fishing nets.

Photograph by Green Renaissance/WWF From " Rhino Wars " National Geographic March 2012 Blindfolded and tranquilized, a black rhino is airlifted in a ten-minute helicopter ride from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province to a waiting truck that will deliver it to a new home some 900 miles away. Designed to extricate the animals gently from difficult terrain, the airlifts are part of an effort to relocate endangered black rhinos to areas better suited to increasing their numbers as well as their range.

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Glacial Rocks " National Geographic March 2012 Glen Rock, New Jersey, is named for its 570-ton erratic. Scientists believe a glacier brought it from about 20 miles north. The Lenape Indians, who inhabited the area, had another idea. Their name for such a rock was pamachapuka—stone from the sky.

Photograph by Bruce Farnsworth From " Visions of Earth " National Geographic March 2012 United States—With aquatic tails plus full sets of legs, western spadefoot tadpoles display the magic of metamorphosis. Just days away from terrestrial life, these pollywogs will not eat until their tails are completely reabsorbed into their bodies.

Photograph by Gary Stubelick From " Top Shots " National Geographic March 2012 A prolonged exposure let Stubelick, 58, create this July 4 photo in Boston. "I like the irony of a fire hydrant on fire," he says, "and a 'fire source' like sparklers implying water flowing from a fire hydrant."

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann From " Glacial Rocks " National Geographic March 2012 A melting iceberg, calved from the snout of Alaska's Mendenhall Glacier, carries a passenger just a bit farther. This rock tumbled onto the glacier back in the mountains and rode the escalator down to Mendenhall Lake.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak From " Arabian Seas " National Geographic March 2012 A huge water-themed resort rises on Dubai's coast.