Researcher Rebecca Montgomery places a camera to measure the recovery of the canopy of La Selva, Costa Rica to learn how quickly the forest recovers after a disturbance or logging operation.

A wall plug is a humorous comment along the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey.

On the Thimble Islands in Connecticut, a landscaping crew lays sod after bring in dirt and other materials to make the granite knob lush. The islands, which have little natural vegetation, now hold many multi-million dollar homes and extensive landscaping. Bringing life to the islands, however, loads Long Island Sounds with nitrogen, which has caused dead zones and fish die-offs.

The Polar Explorer, an oil exploration rig run by Transocean, the same company that ran the Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, sits under the midnight sun in Tromso, Norway. The rig was scheduled to begin exploring Arctic waters for BP, the same company Transocean was working for when the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the water.

Workers at one of the Millstone nuclear reactors in Waterford, CT, move depleted nuclear fuel rods during the refueling of the reactor.

Standing at the western edge of the summit plateau of Mount Washington, NH, Dave Glidden of the Mount Washington Observatory holds a three-cup anemometer to measure wind speed. The observatory has recorded a wind speeds as high as 231 mph, and instruments atop the mountain are checked hourly, year-round, requiring meteorologists to venture into the worst weather in the world to monitor the instruments.