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Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosAs pilgrims bathe and mill behind them, Israeli border police stand guard on the Jordan River’s western bank. Over on the Jordanian side, churches and a tourist center commemorate the traditional site of Jesus’s baptism.
Israel, 2009 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineIn pursuit of water, the girl with the green ladle routinely walks three hours to and from her Ethiopian village of Foro. Females here spend most of their lives fetching water; boys are exempted from the job when they turn seven or eight.
Ethopia 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIIndia’s holiest river, the Ganges, is scribbled with light from floating oil lamps during the Ganga Dussehra festival in Haridwar. Hindus near death often bathe in the river; some are later cremated beside it and have their ashes scattered in its depths.
India, 2009 -
Mark Thiessen, National Geographic StaffMixing a powder made by Pur into diluted water kills bacteria and makes dirt, metals, and parasites clump together so they can be filtered out, leaving crystal-clear water in 30 minutes. Aid groups distribute this product to help combat waterborne diseases.
Washington DC, USA, 2009 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosGirls from a West Bank village cool off in the briny waters of the Dead Sea, the world’s deepest saltwater lake. Naturally buoyant waters make it a favorite of bathers. Yet levels are dropping more than three feet a year.
Israel, 2009 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineTribal Gabra women in northern Kenya may need five hours a day to lug jerry cans laden with murky water across the desert. A lingering drought has pushed this already arid region to a full-blown water crisis.
Kenya 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIA cross hewn in the ice of Maine’s Kennebec River by parishioners of St. Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the baptism of Christ. Water from the Epiphany carving will be used to bless the church.
Maine, USA, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIILocated near Tokyo, the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel attracts tourists with its temple-like design, but its purpose is to prevent major waterways and rivers from overflowing during heavy rains and typhoons.
Japan, 2009 -
Frans Lanting, FreelanceA wealth of water pours over Iguaçu Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina. Fresh water makes up less than 3 percent of the water on our planet, but it is a staggering amount nonetheless: 9.25 million trillion gallons
Brazil and Argentina, 2009 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosAt a water park in Tiberias, Israelis bask in the resource’s relative abundance. A 2009 World Bank report said Israelis use four times as much water per capita as Palestinians. Israel has disputed this, saying its citizens use only twice as much.
Israel, 2009 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineTo this end, NGOs are working to bring clean water to forgotten places, using technology—like a sand dam to capture rainwater in Ethiopia, where some women must wrest drops from muddy seeps —while ensuring that locals are involved in designing, building, and maintaining water projects."
Ethiopia 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIVodou and Christianity meld at the Saut d’Eau waterfall in Ville Bonheur, Haiti, where believers pray to the Virgin Mary and welcome spirits said to inhabit the falls.
Haiti, 2009 -
Marek Rogowiec“Wasserstiefel (Water Boots),” a famous 1986 composition by the visual artist Roman Signer (photographed by Marek Rogowiec), makes a splash and a point: Without water, we are nothing
Switzerland, 1986 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosA bird’s-eye view of the Dead Sea reveals a bleached expanse once covered by water. The level of the inland sea has dropped some 70 feet since 1978 due to evaporation and the greatly diminished flow of its main tributary, the Jordan River.
Israel, 2009 -
Kitra Cahana, National Geographic MagazineShaped like a water drop, this 17-foot-tall steel “meditation space” was made by Kate Raudenbush for Nevada’s annual Burning Man event. Her goal is “to bring awareness to the element of water on our planet and its vital importance to our evolutionary balance.”
Nevada, USA, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIAt Haiti’s Saut d’Eau waterfall, pilgrims bathe and converse in the icy waters during the festival of the Virgin of Miracles, a celebration that honors a reported apparition of the Virgin Mary on top of a palm tree.
Haiti, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIIn Japan’s Mie Prefecture, the sacred cascade at the Tsubaki Grand Shrine washes away impurities. The Shinto ritual called misogi shuho celebrates the communion among worshipper, waterfall, and the creative life force of the universe.
Japan, 2009 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosMesh-covered banana plantations like this one abound along both sides of the Jordan River. The tropical crop is lucrative, but it requires eight times as much water as tomatoes, which are also locally grown.
Israel, 2009 -
Barry Yanowitz, FreelanceA 90-foot-tall cascade spills beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. In 2008 artist Olafur Eliasson installed the public-art piece, one of his four “New York City Waterfalls,” to celebrate “the physicality of water.”
New York, USA, 2008 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIA woman launches an offering on the Mekong River, known to Laotians as the “mother of waters.” The occasion is Boun Pi Mai Lao, the New Year’s celebration, in April.
Laos, 2009 -
Joel Sartore, National Geographic MagazineFreshwater species like this Reimann’s snake-necked turtle, a New Guinea native, are under siege all over the planet, disappearing faster than their land or sea counterparts.
Zoo Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2009 -
Dick Durrance II, National Geographic StockDuring a 1972 drought in Bangladesh, a farmer dispenses precious water plant by plant. Rain is a major source of water in this country, as is the Jamuna River, which begins life in the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau.
Bangladesh, 1972 -
Edward BurtynskyOnce the city’s main water source, the Los Angeles River is now a concrete channel fed by storm drains. City residents rely on water pumped from hundreds of miles away.
California, USA, 2009 -
Jack Dykinga, National Geographic MagazineTo effectively transport precious water, farmers in the arid Southwest have long shared community-operated waterways. This acequia is the 150-year-old People’s Ditch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley.
Colorado, USA, 2009 -
Randy Olson, National Geographic StockFattening up for winter, a brown bear on Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula waits to snatch salmon in Kuril Lake. Often pristine and protected, watersheds in this largely intact ecosystem also support a fishing industry.
Russia, 2008 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosThe snowy peaks of the Himalaya are part of a freshwater cache that courses down to a vast populace: two billion people. But warming temperatures and fast-melting ice could cause disasters downstream.
Nepal, 2009 -
Edward BurtynskyGrass is not an option in Salton City, which survives on water imported from the Colorado River. With 20 million more residents expected in California by 2050, the state’s quest for water is never over.
California, USA, 2009 -
Camille Seaman, FreelanceSevered from the edge of Antarctica, this iceberg might float for years as it melts and releases its store of fresh water into the sea. The water molecules will eventually evaporate, condense, and recycle back to Earth as precipitation.
Antarctica, 2006 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIThe Maya believed natural wells, such as the Xkeken cenote in Mexico’s Yucatán, led to the underworld. Then and now, water flows through human existence, scribing a line between life and death.
Mexico, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosTourists snap memories against the dirty, melting ice of Mingyong Glacier in China’s Yunnan Province. As temperatures have warmed, the glacier has receded a third of a mile over the past decade, and its meltwater is no longer drinkable.
China, 2009 -
Edward BurtynskyAs developments such as Discovery Bay increase in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, so does the flood hazard. More than a million people now live behind delta levees, which are susceptible to increasingly severe coastal storms.
California, USA, 2009 -
Thomas Havisham, PanosPeddling clean well water for 10 cents a bag, this seller will have no problem finding a buyer in a slum in Luanda, Angola. In 2006 the prevalence of contaminated water in the city led to one of Africa’s worst cholera epidemics, with 80,000 Angolans sickened.
Angola, 2005 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIThe new year in Laos is celebrated with a splash—so much so that in parts of Louangphrabang, a city along the Mekong River, water pressure drops to a trickle during the Boun Pi Mai Lao festival.
Laos, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosA Tibetan boy (center) flings prayer cards into the Yellow River during a Buddhist ceremony in China’s increasingly desertified Qinghai Province. Desert now covers one-sixth of the Tibetan Plateau.
China, 2009 -
NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteA color-enhanced image of Saturn’s moon Enceladus reveals a mosaic of fractures, folds, and ridges. Vapor-spraying jets erupt from at least eight sources near the moon’s “tiger stripes” (bottom center), also called sulci.
Enceladus, 2005 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineIn the Foro district of Ethiopia, rocks cover a family latrine, and a stick acts as a handle. Surveys show that the hygiene-education efforts of WaterAid, an NGO, are working here: Latrine use has risen from 6 to 25 percent since December 2007.
Ethiopia, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIITending body and soul, Taizo Noda bathes in the mineral-rich waters of an onsen, or hot spring, near Osaka, Japan. Hours spent soaking, says the 72-year-old, are “the secret of long life.”
Japan, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosThis child of Tibetan nomads lives in a concrete hovel near Huashixia, China, where grasslands are greatly degraded. Tens of thousands of herders have been moved to such communities, only to face unemployment and a difficult adjustment to a more sedentary lifestyle.
China, 2009 -
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)Surveying the red planet from orbit, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spied this residual water ice in a 22-mile-wide crater. The hollow’s thousand-foot-tall wall shades the frozen patch from sunlight and prevents it from vaporizing.
Mars, 2005 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineInstalled by the NGO WaterAid, makeshift wash stations like this one—a water bottle fastened to the exterior of a grass hut, with soap nearby—are appearing in Ethiopian villages, where lack of sanitation can be as dire a problem as water scarcity.
Ethiopia, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIShiva lords over Suraj Water Park near Mumbai, where motifs are Indian but pleasures—like swimming and splashing on a hot day—are universal. Recreation commands a growing share of the world’s water use.
India, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosIn a parched Delhi slum, men swarm a tanker to siphon precious water. “If you throw money here,” says a local 16-year-old named Vinay, “no one would have time to grab it. Water is more important for us.”
India, 2009 -
Joel Sartore, National Geographic MagazineThe Spotted Darter (Etheostoma maculatum) is a native of the Elk River in West Virginia. Its habitat and breeding grounds are threatened by siltation, like that caused by the Sutton Reservoir on the Elk River's main channel.
Conservation Fisheries, Tennessee, 2009 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineIn Ticho, Ethiopia, a drawing of a man defecating elicits laughter from Hiruut Nigusee, who uses the picture in her hygiene classes. At first students were embarrassed, but now they use the latrine, wash their hands, and suffer fewer bouts of diarrhea.
Ethiopia, 2009 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosIsraelis relax by the Sea of Galilee, a lake near the Golan Heights that is fed by the Jordan River and that supplies a third of Israel’s fresh water. Since 1967, Israel has blocked Syria’s access to the shoreline.
Israel, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosLaunching themselves off a drainage pipe, young men in a village in southwestern Tajikistan cool off in the only swimming hole around: an irrigation canal. This canal likely feeds cotton, a water-intensive crop that is the country’s main export.
Tajikistan, 2009 -
Joel Sartore, National Geographic MagazineOuachita madtoms (Noturus lachneri) live only in the Saline River in Arkansas.
Conservation Fisheries, Tennessee, 2009 -
Gerd Ludwig, National Geographic MagazineIn 2007, high levels of bromate—a carcinogen formed when bromide and chlorine react with sunlight—were found in Los Angeles’s seven-acre, 58-million-gallon Ivanhoe Reservoir. Today, three million black plastic balls help deflect UV rays.
California, USA, 2009 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosAfter six years of drought, measuring sticks are useless at Jordan’s Ziglab Dam, built to catch water flowing west into the Jordan River for irrigation. Its reservoir has shrunk to a fifth of capacity and has not filled since 2003, forcing Jordan to ration water.
Jordan, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosNear Chongqing, China, in the industrial town of Luohuangshi, a husband and wife fish in the Yangtze River. Waterways like this one are lifelines for some of Asia’s most densely settled areas, including China’s thirsty metropolises.
China, 2009 -
Joel Sartore, National Geographic MagazineBiologists from Conservation Fisheries look for the federally-endangered Smoky Madtom in Abrams Creek, a stream that they stocked after it was poisoned in the 1950's.
Tennessee, 2009 -
Hans Strand, FreelanceSwirling seaward, branches of the bountiful Kolgrima River inscribe the flatlands near Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier. Milky tones in the water are from pale silt; the blue is the reflection of the sky.
Iceland, 2006 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosShards of sunlight illuminate the Jordan River as it flows into the Sea of Galilee. The biblical stream’s headwaters are to the north, near Mount Hermon. Its final destination is the Dead Sea, some 200 miles downstream from the point of origin.
Israel, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotoBangladeshis in Sirajganj haul boatloads of bagged sand to reinforce a levee eroded by the flooding of the Jamuna River. If melting ice swells the area’s rivers, such stopgap fixes may become more common.
Bangladesh, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIITo be baptized is to be born into a new life in Christ, according to the Greek Orthodox Church. Seven-month-old Stellios Theodore Gikas will be dipped three times during a ceremony at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George in Istanbul, Turkey.
Turkey, 2009 -
Amit Dave, ReutersParched Indian villagers mob a vast well in Natwargadh, Gujarat. In this drought-prone western state, yearly monsoon rains can total less than eight inches, and summer temperatures have topped 115°F.
India, 2003 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosA source of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, water is emblematic of their unequal relationship. During dry summers, West Bank Palestinians—restricted to shallow wells by Israel’s occupation—have to buy groundwater tapped from beneath them.
West Bank, 2009 -
Jonas Bendiksen, Magnum PhotosIn Chongqing—a burgeoning Chinese municipality whose 31 million people tap the Yangtze River for their needs—coal-fired, carbon-dioxide-spewing power plants compete with family farms for water.
China, 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIMuslims perform wudu, the ritual washing before prayers, at Istanbul’s Beyazit Mosque. “Cleanliness is half of faith,” Muhammad told followers.
Turkey, 2009 -
Theo Allofs, CorbisBrown with sediment loosed by seasonal rains, Australia’s King River snakes through the coastal mudflats of the Kimberley, a remote northwestern region. In the dry months of May to September, the 76-mile meander lies bare.
Australia, 2006 -
Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum PhotosAt the Yardenit Baptismal site on the Upper Jordan pilgrims flock by the hundreds to immerse themselves. This section of the river between the Sea of Galilee and the Yarmukh River is the only free-flowing portion of the Jordan.
Israel, 2009 -
Lynn Johnson, National Geographic MagazineIn Shekana, Ethiopia, Halike Berisha must fill her jug from a contaminated reservoir. Access to clean water is not solely a rural problem, but the challenges of delivering it are most daunting in remote places.
Ethopia 2009 -
John Stanmeyer, VIIA Hasidic Jew in Ukraine immerses himself before Rosh Hashanah in a quarry pool that serves as a mikvah, a body of water used for spiritual cleansing.
Ukraine, 2009 -
Tim A. Hetherington, PanosWater towers are reminders of how we engineer structures to manage our most vital resource. These towers in the United Arab Emirates pressurize water to service the arid federation’s plumbing.
United Arab Emirates, 2008 (All) -
Zena Holloway, Getty ImagesAn underwater portrait captures the buoyancy of babies, who are three-fourths water. That fraction becomes two-thirds as we age, yet our vital fluids remain saline, like the oceans from which life sprang.
England, 2003
