Science at Cal - Anand Varma - A Photographic Exploration of Patagonia's Wetlands and Volcanoes
Channel: ckleinastro
Date: 16/06/2012

Northern Patagonia has the strongest rainfall gradient in the world, transforming from rainforest to desert in less than 100 miles. In order to explore water's influence on the natural and human communities along this gradient, I traveled to Argentina in 2010 and photographed the wetlands of the region. I worked from the lush Valdivian rainforest in the west to the Patagonian desert of the east. Six months after I left, the Puyehue Volcano erupted and dumped ash across the same region. I returned in 2011 to show what this new element meant for the landscape and people of Patagonia. I will present my photographs, share the natural history stories behind them, and discuss what this eruption means for the future of Patagonia.

Anand Varma is a staff photographer at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley. He graduated with a B.A. in Integrative Biology in 2008 and has been working with researchers on campus and around the world to communicate science through photography. He began working as a photographic assistant for National Geographic Magazine as an undergraduate and has worked on 12 feature stories for the magazine. In 2010, he received a Young Explorer Grant from National Geographic to photograph the wetlands of Patagonia and has since become a freelance contributor to the magazine. His current projects include documenting the egg and nest collection on campus and photographing hummingbird courtship displays with Dr. Chris Clark at Yale University.