Columbia Beautiful Planet 2025
Each year, we honor Earth Day by sharing some amazing photos celebrating the beauty and magic of our planet, as captured by the Columbia community.
April 29, 2025
Every year, the Climate School honors Earth Day by sharing images that celebrate the beauty and magic of our planet as captured by the Columbia community. A few highlights from this year’s selection include the blue skies of the Atacama Desert, Chile; an erupting volcano in La Palma, Spain; a penguin studying a biologist in the Amundsen Sea; and coral tagging and replanting in Hawai’i.
Please enjoy our Columbia Beautiful Planet selections and visit our Earth Day website for more on this year’s theme, Our Power, Our Planet.
Volcanologists Janine Birnbaum and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s Einat Lev during an installation of a thermal web camera to monitor the eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain in fall 2021. Credit: Pedro Hernández Pérez (INVOLCAN)
Atacama Desert, Chile. Credit: Joey Parr, Columbia Climate School
Critically endangered juvenile red-shanked doucs (_Pygathrix nemaeus_). Endangered Primate Rescue Center, Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam (2025). Credit: Jenna Lawrence, Columbia Climate School (SDEV, SUMA)
Guatapé, Colombia as seen from El Peñón de Guatapé (The Rock of Guatapé). Credit: Charly Vergara Benjumea, National Center for Disaster Preparedness
White rhinoceros, zebras and lesser kudus resting inside a ranch, Kleinfontein, South Africa, July 21, 2024. Credit: Immanuel Hasian, Columbia SUMA
A penguin studies Lamont biologist Raymond Sambrotto, the Amundsen Sea, December 2008. Credit: Xiaojun Yuan, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Pinecones in Newfoundland. Credit: Joey Parr, Columbia Climate School
Exploring modern and paleo dunes, Molokai, Hawaii, June 2023. Credit: Jacky Austermann, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Summer interns deploying experimental mesocosms in Morningside Park Pond, NYC. Credit: Joaquim Goes, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Flying over the A-68 iceberg that broke off the Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017 during a 2018 NASA Operation IceBridge campaign. Credit: Caitlin Locke, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
This piece was installed at the Governor’s Island Climate Imaginarium in summer of 2024. The Imaginarium is an outgrowth of the Climate Imaginations Network and was led by Josh Nodiff, MA Climate & Society alum, with support from the Climate School as well as Climate School adjunct faculty and filmmaker Lydia Pilcher. Credit: Sandra Goldmark, Columbia Climate School
Graduate student Lauren Lewright walking across a pebble beach in Patagonia (March 2024). Credit: Jacky Austermann, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Joint USA-South Africa teams set to head out to sample on Walker Bay during NASA BioSCape field campaign. Credit: Joaquim Goes, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Coral tagging and replanting in Hawai’i. Courtesy: Maria Lujan, Columbia Climate School
Coring expedition in Budd Lake, NJ, February 1, 2025. Credit: Dorothy Peteet, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Rainbow over the Rose Garden at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (2016). Credit: Caroline Leland, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Last Interglacial beach unit (125,000 years old), Oahu, Hawaii, June 2023. LDEO’s Mo Raymo (left) and Steve Goldstein (right). Credit: Jacky Austermann, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Students on an excursion during field work in Puerto Rico, 2015. Credit: Bärbel Hönisch, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Aerial view of Lamont campus taken by a drone on August 30, 2022. Credit: Tom Burke, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory