The sixth issue of Springs meditates on questions of heritage, place, and responsibility. How many generations does it take to make a meal? How do we show we care—for humans and for nonhumans alike? When we look up, is it a starry night or a sea of fog? At home in Utah, Christopher Cokinos reflects upon a life of lunar research and encourages us to ponder the Moon’s role in our lives, histories, and futures. From the Middle East to the Balkans, Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova explores the diverse history of tarhana’s microbial cultures and distinct culinary flavors while foregrounding its importance to a sustainable future of food. When Stephen Milder talks about a German advertising slogan, he reveals how today’s perception of environmental problems differs from the 1960s. In the Azorean town of Furnas, L. Sasha Gora guides us through a place where the fumaroles simmer an ancient stew, and she asks us to consider the relationship between environments, ingredients, and energy.  As she looks at human attachment to individual companion species, Kieko Matteson pens her discord with birds in captivity and considers what could take the place of cages. To better understand work in and on heat in the age of climate change, Daniel Dumas sits down with Elspeth Oppermann to discuss her novel, and personal, approach to the field.

The fifth issue of Springs is an odyssey from the cold depths of a northern German lake to the warm dunes of southern Portugal. Jessica Lee travels to the German village of Neuglobsow to uncover a region shaped by the intangible legends of ferocious red roosters as well as by the tangible impact of a nearby nuclear power plant. A new, re-enchanting vocabulary for the misunderstood kingdom of fungi, giving an organism “agency” through language, is, as Alison Pouliot contends, the first step toward a more mainstream recognition. When RCC Director Christof Mauch sits down with Martin Saxer, it is to discuss what makes the spatially unconfined practice of contemporary foraging different from the that of hunter–gatherers. Anthropologist Emmanuelle Roth and historian Gregg Mitman follow a local park ranger through the Nimba mountain range to investigate how the region’s complex history has altered relations among its living and nonliving occupants. Along the shoreline of a small beaver pond in Maine, writer and historian Beth LaDow regales us with a story of the quirky relationship between humans and beavers and gives us a glimpse into the everyday life of the wetlands they create. Joana Gaspar de Freitas reckons with her self-professed transitory muses: sand dunes. Among the shifting slopes of southern Portugal’s human-shaped shoreline, the product of a decades-long beach nourishment project, Joana’s personal history and her professional research collide.

The fourth issue of Springs leads us across four continents, from the streets of downtown Los Angeles to the Ecuadorian Amazon, into the woodlands of southwest Nigeria, and along Ukraine’s Dnipro river. Frank Zelko yanks the root causes of tooth loss in industrial societies from the long history of dental ecology. Jens Kersten implores the democratic states of the Global North to transform their constitutional orders and embrace their responsibility for planetary health. As we digest the marvelous images of Amelia Fiske and Jonas Fischer’s “Crude Encounters,” we are asked to consider the ecological and psychological impacts of oil extraction. Brady Fauth sits down with Francesca Mezzenzana to discuss her research into children’s human–nonhuman relationships. Joseph Adedeji encourages us to experience the power of built heritage as a symbol of hope for a harmonious coexistence of society and the nonhuman world. Irus Braverman’s “Mother Drone, Mother Nature” holds under the microscope the ongoing convergences in technological innovation, nature conservation, and the Israeli military. Jenny Price pulls us through the looking glass, into the unique world of mockstitutions. The Dnipro river, a major focus of Soviet industrialization, is the subject of Paul Josephson’s “Rivers as Battlefields.” Serenella Iovino writes about Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees and uncovers the author’s unique political ecology.

The third issue of Springs includes peer-reviewed essays on heat and hurricanes, an interview on plants in urban environments, and reflections on transactional thinking about the environment. Paula Ungar’s reflective essay considers Alexander von Humboldt’s observations and a more deeply rooted wisdom. Tom Princen’s “Weathered History: Galveston and Extreme Events” explores the effects of hurricanes and land subsidence on the region of Galveston, Texas. Nina Wormbs reports on reasoning in the face of climate change. In “Roots through Asphalt,” Sonja Dümpelmann and Pauline Kargruber discuss the multifaceted history of plants and trees in urban spaces. Steve Mentz takes the reader with him as he revisits the lake by the Rachel Carson Center’s Landhaus. Melanie Arndt’s “The Heat Is On!” explores turn of the twentieth-century technologies that created central heating, its societal impacts, and its limits. Helen Tiffin’s opinion essay makes the case for inhabitants of the Global North to limit human reproduction. In “The Slow Death of an Ethiopian Lake,” Hayal Desta demonstrates the effects of water-grabbing with a focus on the international flower industry. Paul Sutter establishes the term “Knowledge Anthropocene” to describe an intellectual enterprise that has changed our understanding of earth systems and our role within them.