31/12/2024
National Geographic photographers ventured to places far and wide to capture the year’s most fascinating images. Out of more than 2.3 million photos, 20 were selected as our Pictures of the Year 📸 See them all at: https://on.natgeo.com/4gMDHJa
M'hammed Kilito photographed Siwa Oasis, a body of water in the Egyptian desert that supports a town of 35,000 people and attracts tourists from across the globe. Like many oases, however, Siwa Oasis is in trouble: a poorly planned agricultural expansion in the 1980s caused waterlogging and salinization of the soil, killing off vital crops in turn. The humid microclimate of Siwa Oasis is an ecosystem in decline and could join the more than 33 million acres of oases around the globe degraded into deserts from 1995 to 2020.
