Tuileries Garden Paris, France 2010
© Alex S. MacLean / Landslides Aerial Photography / http://alexmaclean.com For print + licensing inquiries, please email alex@alexmaclean.com
Inside the Wall a Beautiful Garden Boston, MA 2015 (c) Alex S. MacLean / Landslides Aerial Photography
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates's 2013 design of Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum aims to interpret the museum’s meandering gallery layout, and the rich colors and textures of its idiosyncratic collection, in a contemporary landscape context. Text source: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (www.mvvainc.com)
"Tilling Along the Contour" Roscoe, TX 2007 (C) Alex S. MacLean/ Landslides Aerial Photography
My final day of posting will be of tilling patterns, which have been the telltale marks of agricultural landscapes; revealing soils, topography, and climate. Tilling practices today are being re-assessed and now are shifting towards no-till methods, which will change the look of the landscape. No-till practices mitigate climate change and are more sustainable through the potential of carbon sequestration and the reduction of energy use, soil depletion, and water and wind erosion.
The farmer in this picture is spraying his fields in a linear pattern, as opposed to the underlying tilling pattern, which follows the contour of the landscape.
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"Dumping of Earth" Alberta, Canada 2014 (C) Alex S. MacLean/Landslides Aerial Photography
Soil below the muskeg must be removed before miners get to more-deeply buried tar sands oil. The unwanted material is hauled one truck-load at a time to waste piles. The truck seen here, the largest dump truck in the world, is approximately 50 feet high when it's bucket is tipped up. It carries a 400 ton load.
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"Terraces of Open Pit Mining" Suncor Millenium Mine Alberta, Canada 2014 (C) Alex S. MacLean/Landslides Aerial Photography
The Suncor company cut down forests and dug up bogs, known as muskeg, that previously covered this land now known as the Millenium Mine. Huge shovels and giant bulldozers carve broad terraces in the ground as they seek out ore hundreds of feet below the surface. In the distance, sunlight glints off tailing ponds, where processing plants dump waste. The forest displaced by this industrial activity once served as home to numerous kinds of trees, caribou, moose, and many other plants and animals. It also stored massive quantities of carbon in peat deposits on the forest surface.
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"Syncrude Mildred Lake Mine on the Banks of the Athabasca River" Alberta, Canada 2014 (C) Alex S. MacLean/ Landslides Aerial Photography
Tar sands mines and processing factories in Alberta are among the largest industrial activities on Earth. The Syncrude Mildred Lake Mine, on the banks of the Athabasca River, measures more than ten miles across.
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"Steam and Smoke Rise From Upgrading Facility" Alberta, Canada 2014 (C) Alex MacLean/ Landslides Aerial Photography
Tar sands oil is unlike conventional oil that flows out of wells. It's gooey fluid called bitumen, mixed with sand, clay, and water. Oil companies go to great lengths to turn this energy-rich ore into usable fuel.
In this photograph, steam and smoke rise up from an oil processing plant at the Syncrude Mildred Lake Mine. The factory releases heavily contaminated wastewater into tailing ponds, such as the one in the foreground.
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"Stages of Forest Clearing" Suncor Steepbank Mine Alberta, Canada 2014 (C) Alex MacLean/ Landslides Aerial Photography
The Tar Sands in Northern Alberta show the extremes to which we go to obtain oil. Extracting oil from tar sands deposits is extremely destructive. It requires huge amounts of energy, making tar sands oil much more carbon intensive than conventional oil. The photographs in today's posts were collected in two trips to the Tar Sands for my book Supply + Demand, co-written by Daniel Grossman, and funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Oil in shallow tar sands deposits are obtained by open pit mining. First, trees are cut and marshes are removed. In this photograph, water is being drained from a pray big that was bulldozed into piles.
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Phelps Dodge Large Open Pit Mine Bagdad, AZ 2014
© Alex S. MacLean/ Landslides Aerial Photography / http://alexmaclean.com
For print + licensing inquiries, please email alex@alexmaclean.com