Special Series

101 Natural History Books You Should Read Before You Die

10. John Madson’s Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass Prairie - Over a decade ago, I sat at a table in a dimly lit room with five ecologists talking about the…
9. Georg Wilhelm Steller’s Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742 - Dr. Steller was, for the most, not exactly a happy man, and in the last years of his short life…
8. Donald Culross Peattie’s An Almanac for Moderns - Natural-history writing comes in many flavors. Sometimes it takes the form of a catalog of observations of plants and animals,…
7. John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez - Some relationships are legendary: Laurel and Hardy, Lennon and McCartney, Stanley and Livingstone, Astaire and Rodgers, … Han and Chewbacca.…
6. Alexander Skutch’s A Naturalist on a Tropical Farm - Alexander Skutch needs little introduction to any enthusiast of tropical birds. Skutch was born in the United States, but he…

The Aesthetic Roots of Natural History - The first song of a male Red-winged Blackbird in late winter reminds me of the many hours I have spent…
Mount Auburn Cemetery - Today, I have come to Mount Auburn to see what is here – no lions, no tigers. Just minutes away…
Seeing the Natural History Way - Perception is one of the greatest of all natural gifts. It provides continuous flows of energy and information—enhancing facets of…
Why Natural History Matters - The world needs natural history now more than ever. Because natural history – which I have defined as “a practice…
Rewilding Natural History - Many people who currently advocate for nature, and for the importance of nature in human lives, focus on what can…

Active Learning in a Natural History and Related Courses Using Video Open Educational Resources: Observations over a Decade - The need for open educational resources (OERs) in STEM and natural history education has never been more important given COVID-19…
Why teach natural history through hybrid and online courses? - In this paper, we describe the current trends in online enrollment in higher education and summarize the research on the…
The Use of Original Music Videos to Teach Natural History - We describe the use of original music videos as instructional aides for a large non-science major course in natural history.…
Developing Mobile Tools for Biodiversity Informatics and Natural History Education - The increasing availability of mobile educational technologies provides new opportunities for biodiversity research, education, and public engagement with the natural…

How Natural History Shapes Purpose, Culture, and Identity in Ecology - Natural history is who we are as ecologists. I understand such a general statement is not quite this simple, but…
Natural History of a Silent Forest - Natural history is a “practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy”…
Drawing Inspiration in the Eastern Sierra Nevada - Field-based teaching has long been an essential component of natural history education, providing students with spatial, temporal, and sensory context…
Natural History in the City: Connecting People to the Ecology of their Plant and Animal Neighbors - The world is becoming increasingly altered in ways that drastically affect habitat quality for wildlife. Moreover, the majority of people…
NextGen Natural History: New Technologies for Classical Natural History Questions - Persistent questions regarding the identities of organisms and their relationships to environments have driven natural history through the millennia. Tools…