Photographer Page

Luján Agusti

Image of customers seen through a thermal scanner at the entrance of a supermarket in Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The vast majority of food on the island is imported, and shopping is centralised in big supermarket chains—creating a challenge for social distancing. During lockdown, thermal scanners were placed in the supermarkets to take the temperature of incoming customers. Customers with elevated temperatures were sent home.

Local scientist Julio Escobar assists with fieldwork at the Moat peatland. Here, he observes progress on a road being constructed without necessary approval or environmental impact studies.

In 2019, construction on a road, called the Provincial Route No. 30 Beagle Corridor, began. Connecting the city of Ushuaia with Cabo San Pío at the end point of Tierra del Fuego, the route would extend approximately 80 miles along the entire coast of the Beagle Channel. Construction would mean cutting down trees and through peatlands. Facing local opposition, the project is now on hold.

Peat mining is still an active industry in Tierra del Fuego. This machine grinds peat, which is then placed in absorbent blankets used heavy industry to absorb oil.

Two peat samples are compared; a more recent sample taken near the surface (top) and one that may be about 10,000 years old (bottom), in which more compact material and greater decomposition can be seen.

A section of peat bog extracted from the Andorra Valley in Tierra del Fuego. Although the normally waterlogged soil is dry, hundreds of years of layers are visible. Peat forms very slowly, just one millimeter per year. Many of the world's peat bogs contain thousands of years of stored carbon.

On the Mitre Peninsula at the southern tip of Argentina, biologist Verónica Pancotto measures vegetation growing in the Moat Peat Bog.

This freshly scooped peat was collected from a site where a business once extracted peat for commercial use. Popular in horticulture, peat is used as fertile planting soil and to mitigate spills from oil mining operations.

Peat from a local bog in Tierra del Fuego. There are several local businesses that extract peat to be used as fuel, fertilizer, or absorbants in heavy industry.

On the island of Tierra del Fuego, which encompasses the southernmost part of Chile and Argentina, the Carbajal Valley, seen here from above, holds one of the area’s largest peat bogs. Peatlands play a critical role in mitigating floodwater, holding fresh drinking water, and storing carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.