O NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Maren 1999 2 Journey to the Heart of the Sahara iui a lad — Departments ‘avaged by wor, poverty, aed the relerdes desert son two men trv Behind the Scenes ‘S000 miles in a modern-day caravan in scarch of x ancient way oft Forum Geographica 34 Photographing the Sahara From Aloft takin to che Earth Almanac sky with a paraghder, a motorized backpack, and three gallons of gas, Interactive daring photographer eains an extraordinary perspective om the desert. From the Editor ARTICLE AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEORGE STEINMETZ _— Hlashback 40 North Florida Springs Cave dives prot the darkdepths —— Tusbiback ofthese natural fountains to puzzle out te intricacies of Florida's EEE Since” orocnarasor wasstnas: The Cover 60. Steller’s Sea-Eagles Tes powerful rpiors bil nests as big kings beds and feast on richsalmon runs Busi’ Fr East. In the ELNito of 1997 38, Hurricane Linde one ofthe strongest ue i sors ever rece 72 EINifio/La Nitta improved warningsystems have reduced the in the eastem Paci destruction, but the periodic warming ae cooling of Pacific waters tates western Mexico continue to blast the globe with dew storms Inge processed by trever supien NASA Goddard Lab 96 In the Wake of the Spill ten years efter the taxon Valder 72H07’Sor Atmospheres fouied 1,300 miles of Alaska coastline, the oi spill’s impact on wildlife with data from NOAA. ‘ani human lives—ie stl being calcul je. —— I JOMN Gy MITCHELL. PHOTOGRAPHS BY KAREN KASNAUSKI Sree. 8 Unmasking the Snapping Turtle ojien she hunied and Fecmsrsers leas cal rot the hater ese surprisingly graceful denizens of ponds and streams ‘¥-800-NGS-LINE ‘an live more than a hundred years and weigh nat 200 pounds Speci ie foDrought and flood, famine and pesti- lence: Name your calamity and at least some cases can be blamed on the periodic warming of Pacific Ocean waters known as El Nifio and its NATURE’S vicious cooler sister, the stormy, little under- stood La Nitta. It nose our oF THE rnoPICAL Pactete in late 1997, bearing more energy than a million Hiroshima bombs, By the time it had run fis course eight months later, the giant El Nino of 1997-98 had deranged. weather patterns around the workd, killed an estimated 2,100 people, and caused atleast 33 billion dollars in Property damage. IsaiasIpanagut Silva knew none of that. All he sand the other peasant farmers in the Peruvian hamlet of Chato Chico could sce was that after weeks of incessant rain the adjacent Piura River had not stopped rising. The rainfall itself was no surprise. Every three toseven years, for aslong as anyone could remember, the same rainfall had arrived after pool of hot seawater the size of March 1999==@eeee