Environment | Amanda Womac

Nature Illuminated

Deep in the woods on a warm summer evening, a species of beetle signals its mate with a flash pattern unique to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Synchronous fireflies ...Read More

Digitizing Lichens & Bryophytes

Across the planet’s terrestrial surface lives a layer of organisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Lichens and bryophytes are hosts to these cryptobiotic ...Read More

Singing in a Silent Spring

Birds respond to a half-century soundscape reversion during the COVID-19 shutdown When the novel coronavirus swept across the country, forcing most businesses to close their ...Read More

Uncovering Microbial Mysteries

Karen Lloyd spends most of her waking hours thinking about mud. Specifically, the mud at the bottom of the ocean and trying to determine how deep into the earth she can dig ...Read More

Hellbenders Revealed

Snot otter. Mud devil. Grampus. Walking catfish. Lasagna lizard. These are not the most flattering nicknames, but they are the ones that stuck to Cryptobranchus ...Read More

Forest Gliders

Nestled in hollow tree crevices at the highest elevations of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the park’s more elusive mammals—the Carolina flying ...Read More

Here Be Dragons

When people visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they are usually expecting to see charismatic flora and fauna such as pink lady slippers or black bears. Insects rarely ...Read More

Diversity of Species

Jessica Budke’s fascination with plants stems from a family vacation to the Missouri Botanical Gardens when she was in high school. Although she grew up going to the ...Read More

Diversity of Thought: Environmental Ethics

John Nolt—a self-described nerd—began his career in the Department of Philosophy teaching philosophical logic. However, like Marvel comic characters, such as Spider-Man, ...Read More

Looking for Action

Love Canal became a national crisis in 1978 when rusting metal drums poked through the surface of an elementary school playground built on a former industrial dump site. The ...Read More