A street dog in Varanasi city, India

How Street Dogs Spend their Days

Generally lazy, often friendly, the dogs of India know how to relax.
François André Michaux, “Cotton Wood,” from The North America Sylva, 1817–19.

Plant of the Month: Poplar

Poplar—ubiquitous in timber, landscape design, and Indigenous medicines—holds new promise in recuperating damaged ecosystems.
Mono Lake

The Imperiled Inland Sea

Twenty years ago, scholar W. D. Williams predicted the loss of salt lakes around the world.
An illustration of a bathysphere, 1934

The New Oceanography: More Remote and More Inclusive

The days of celebrity oceanographers romancing the deep are gone, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Frankfurt, Germany

Can We Cool Warming Cities?

The new, hotter normal requires urban planners and city governments to consider heat hazards when creating climate action plans.
Arachis hypogaea, Warren Delano collection of Chinese export paintings of fruits, flowers, and vegetables, ca. 1794–1852, Botany Libraries.

Plant of the Month: Peanut

The peanut, a natural hybrid of two species, originated in Bolivia. It now plays a critical role in food cultures around the world.
Colour lithograph of partial lunar eclipse by Etienne Leopold Trouvelot

Trouvelot’s Total Lunar Eclipse

Immigrant artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot used his skills to accurately represent the details—and the sublimity—of our solar system.
Glowing ring of gas around central dark shadow of black hole Sagittarius A* at center of Milky Way

Black Holes R Us

The universe is full of black holes. Even the Milky Way has one, and we now have a picture of it. Don't panic, but it looks like a blurry glazed donut.
Teenage boy stands looking ahead with power plant fumes behind him

Young People and Eco-Anxiety

As problems caused by climate change become more acute, so too does the eco-anxiety of the world's youth.
Plate 66 of Birds of America by John James Audubon depicting Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Is the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Still Around?

With the US government poised to declare the Ivory-billed Woodpecker extinct, scientists work to determine what counts as evidence of existence.