Astronomy
An Observatory on Borrowed Time
Its telescope is a century old and its funding runs out in March. Its astronomers are using the time they have left to finish a sky survey begun in 1931.
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Science writer
Erik Lindqvist
Erik Lindqvist is a science writer covering climate, ice, and forests, usually from somewhere without a phone signal. He spent five summers as a field assistant on glacier surveys in the northern ranges and two winters as a forestry inspector before writing The Snowline Moves Uphill, an account of a decade of fieldwork on a single mountainside. He lives in Norhaven, where he skis to the post office from December to March, and he writes his field notes in pencil because ink freezes.
3 pieces by Erik
Ecology
Counting Mushrooms for Forty Autumns
A retired schoolteacher has walked the same forest plots every October since 1986. Her notebooks are now one of the best fungal records anywhere.
Climate
Reading a Glacier Like a Ledger
Each summer’s melt leaves a line. A team that has cored the same glacier for twenty-two years is reading those lines as a household reads its accounts.