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Shape Shifting
Conservation strategies have been historically focused on getting an overview of the species in a region, and then trying to protect those species that are endangered. I’ve written often before about...
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Watery Treasure
Draining swamps and wetlands has, over the course of human civilization, been seen as a way to grasp land from the greedy waters that cover most of the Earth’s surface. Add to this that much of the...
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Atlantis, Past and Future
On the shoreline of the Welsh coast near Borth, violent winter storms caused remnants of an ancient kingdom and forest to emerge from the sea, lending some physical evidence to underpin the area’s...
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Accidental Questions
Some of the best experiments are the ones that are accidental. Viewed from the right perspective, they can offer unanticipated insight into questions we didn’t even know needed to be asked. Discovering...
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Floating Farms
I always have a soft spot for illustrations of future visions. This image of seaweed carriers is no exception. A company called Seaweed Energy Solutions (SES) has developed and patented seaweed growing...
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Chasing Wind
We drove across northern Germany a few days ago, following the A1 autobahn from Hamburg to Osnabrück through long stretches of low hills and lower fields lush with crops. The motorway forms the upper...
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Water Falls
This 1999 satellite image shows Colorado River-fed Lake Powell, the second-largest man-made reservoir (1963) in the United States. Source: NASA/Earth Observatory A crucible for past, present and future...
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Washed Up
Knobby Sea StarArtist: Jane Kim/InkDwell Warmer water temperatures, reduced ability to fight illness, pathogens passed on from shellfish – it’s not quite clear which of these, or maybe which...
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What We Talk About When We Talk About War (VII)
According to the website Wars in the World, as of 11 September 2014, there are currently ongoing conflicts classified as ‘wars’ in 64 countries; there are conflicts involving of 567 militias, guerrilla...
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Tapping Out
The town of Porterville, California has been in the news over the past couple of months because it is one of the places where taps are running dry as the state’s drought grinds on into its fourth...
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Honey-coated Rubble
Mandala Insect Art Series – Honey bee 2852Artist: Susan Cleaver It’s a strange partnership, the one between mining companies and beekeepers in West Virginia. Under mine reclamation programs, the mining...
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Subterranean Lines
A fracking well at the surface.Photo: Eugene Richards/National Geographic The bulk of the fracking boom currently underway in the United States is not only in one of the least populated and remote...
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Industrial Reforestation
I haven’t yet made peace with the notion of drone swarms in civilian life, whether they are for deliveries or photography or oil pipe monitoring or any number of ostensibly benign and useful...
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Of a Circular Nature
A flood control project in the Pikine suburb of Dakar, Senegal, has changed a community by redirecting flood waters into basins and creating urban gardens from the water. Aerial view of Pikine with...
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Antarctic Shiver
Everyone knows the best scare stories are those in which the most obvious and visible danger turns out to less dire than an unsuspected peril revealed only later, the deadfall that sends a shiver down...
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Leafing Out
There are few places in the world, if any, that aren’t touched by human activity, including places with no humans. And one of our chief human activities over the past couple of centuries has been the...
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Arctic Oil Hubris
Black treasure (2014) blown glassArtist: Antoine Brodin The U.S. government has approved plans by Royal Dutch Shell to begin drilling for oil off the Alaskan coast this summer. This comes after years...
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Telling the Bees
Many cultures have customs relating to bees, animals that have long been highly valued, if little understood. After all, bees work hard all year, they pollinate many of our favorite foods and enable...
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Cold Case
Melting ice cores.Source: Jacquelyn Hams/PolarTrec It might seem like the project to take ice to Antarctica is the very definition of redundancy. Like taking coal to Newcastle or turning on the lawn...
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Adding It Up
Not so very long ago, processing large amounts of data was a tedious business, riddled with human error, machine failings and limited reach. These days, information availability can feel like a...
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