Talking Fungus: Finding Language for a Troubled Kingdom
10 minutes
Language greatly colours the way we perceive life. Words and concepts shape our perception of nature, and not all organisms receive equal consideratio...
The Value of Fragments: Making a Hotspot in Mount Nimba, Liberia
by Emmanuelle Roth and Gregg Mitman
28 minutes
Faint high-pitched sounds echo up from the cavernous pit into which we peer. At twilight’s edge, the dry season’s intense midday sun has mellowed into...The World as a Wardian Case
by Kate Brown
21 minutes
In 1829, Nathanial Bagshaw Ward, a London doctor, placed the pupa of a sphinx moth, some dirt, and a few leaves in a glass bottle and clamped on a lid...Beavering
11 minutes
Spring is approaching. The beavers have left a single stick about a meter long across the pond outlet, marking their intentions. “No mud yet, but we a...The Poetics of Dunes
11 minutes
I grew up by the sea, in the warm south of Portugal, swimming in the ocean and playing in the sand. I didn’t know then that my childhood playground wa...Rivers as Battlefields: Ukraine’s Dnipro
18 minutes
Wars turn the natural environment into battlefields. In economic wars, regions perceived as rich in resources become contested bounty for powerful pre...Climate-Sensitive Architecture as a Blueprint: Habits, Shades, and the Irresistible Staircase
15 minutes
Patterns of Desire The relationship of climate to the built environment has been of increasing interest over the past decade. As is generally known, t...
The Magic Mirror: Legends, Limnology, and Nuclear Power on Lake Stechlin
by Jessica Lee
15 minutes
On the horizon of the small German village of Neuglobsow, the chimney of the Rheinsberg nuclear power plant rises above the surrounding beech and pine...
Roots through Asphalt: A Conversation with Sonja Dümpelmann
by Sonja Dümpelmann and Pauline Kargruber
15 minutes
Sonja Dümpelmann is a landscape historian who is currently working on how grass species have transformed the world, and the history and political impl...Five Ways of Seeing the Steinsee
by Steve Mentz
7 minutes
On my last day as a Landhaus fellow at the Rachel Carson Center, with thin December light not quite thawing the snow, I abandoned packing to hike out ...The Slow Death of an Ethiopian Lake
by Hayal Desta
14 minutes
I first had the opportunity to visit Lake Ziway when I studied biology as an undergraduate at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, in the mid-1990s. Loca...Adventures in Mockstitutions
by Jenny Price
7 minutes
“If You Need to Use the Art” is an alt-institution public art project—or a mockstitution, to use artist Gregory Sholette’s moniker. These projects mim...