ecology

For the fifth post in our sister series marking the publication of Dark Ocean, this photo essay by Nick Hunt charts the rapid vanishing of Uzbekistan's Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world.

Tracing her encounters with the 'white passion' of strawberry flowers and the dawn song of a thrush, Idaho poet CMarie Furhman reflects on the generosity of other species while asking whether humans have anything to offer in return. From 'Elementals Vol. 5' (Center for Humans & Nature)

Fellow lichenologist and artist Nastassja Noell reviews 'The Lichen Musuem' by A. Laurie Palmer and its transdisciplinary approach to lichen biology, ecology and biomorphic patterns for equitable, thriving futures.

Felipe Viveros travels into the mountains of Chile to connect with his Indigenous heritage and to meet Ñaña Amalia, 'an ancestor in the making'

Erika Howsare introduces her newly published The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors,  an unflinching look at a wild and mysterious creature that has run through our human lives since the Palaeolithic era, and now faces us with the complexity and brutality of the Anthropocene. With an extract of her meeting with the Korean-American 'deer artist' artist Meesha Goldberg.

Today we bring you an excerpt from the new collection of essays, Mossback, by David Michael Pritchett, who looks for ways to resist empire and heal our cultural wounds by immersing himself in the murky waters of our living world. Introduced by Neale Inglenook.

Final post in our introduction to The Plant Practice series: Sara Angelucci goes into the night to record the flowers and insects of her home territory in Canada

This week scientist and writer Anneka Williams delves into the underground world of the largest organism, a pathogenic fungus stretching for miles in the soil of an Oregon forest.

For our Under the Canopy series: Lichenologist Nastassja Noell takes her paint box into the forest and perceives our relationship with trees and life from a radically different perspective

Alexa Firmenich plunges us into the Earth's 'staggering bedlam' of complex and symbiotic relationships and asks what happens when they disappear?

First of our watery posts this month, Warren Draper follows the currents of his homeland river Don in Yorkshire, and contemplates the radical act of immersion With music and video.