This story appears in the July 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine. In the Afar desert of Ethiopia, there are a lot of ways to die. There is disease, of course. One can also perish from ...

From afar (or even from just 10 feet away), the patch of land just south of Highway 62 and east of the town of Joshua Tree looks like any other undeveloped parcel of Mojave Desert landscape, dotted ...

The explosions in December led to the exodus of the estimated 10,000 community members living in Seganto. Today, Seganto remains empty. Hassan Kamil Konte, a community elder, fled and now lives in a ...

Scientists brave the desert's hardships for a different reason. The Afar is one of the few places on Earth where an undersea ridge—a jagged volcanic seam where magma oozes up and becomes new ...

Awash Fentale — A semi-desert plain that lies between two rugged mountains has, for about five months, been the epicenter of volcanic activity in Ethiopia's Afar region. From a distance ...