Definearth Powers Down After Nine Years
In this article: Why I started writing and where to go from here.
An elementary school teacher once advised my parents that I should write more at home to improve my writing abilities. I spent that whole summer filling spiral-bound notebooks with stories until the graphite turned my left hand gray. As an adult, my handle on the art of writing in the English language is far from perfect, but it has improved significantly from those early years, and in no small way thanks to that critical schoolteacher. My words have spilled over the pages of diaries, lab notebooks, blogs, digital magazines, and peer-reviewed literature.
If you’re reading this, either you were once subscribed to an environmental blog called definearth, or this newsletter found you by happenstance.
My musings on various planetary issues from water treatment to climate tech on definearth reached over twenty-two thousand people since its start in the summer of 2015. I wrote and edited more than 190 articles, interviewed or collaborated with other scientists or science communicators on six of them, and grew an audience of more than 600 subscribers over 9 years. I connected with birders, gardeners, hikers, scientists, activists, readers, and writers of all ages from around the globe. But, readership reached its summit four years ago, and since has been on a steady decline. My personal observations of a dwindling online community matched the general downwards trend in WordPress site visits for the site at large, since that time.
Over the last few months, I tested out different formats of a biweekly newsletter on this new media platform, Substack. Peatmail highlights important science about peatlands and other wetlands. Unlike my previous work, where the focus ebbed and flowed, my goal here is to use my knowledge of wetland science as a framework for contextualizing scientific media. Each letter contains a short composition on a relevant topic viewed through a scholarly lens, implications of contemporary research findings, and audio & visual wetland media. This newsletter is meant to be skimmed, but can also be a resource for those who wish to pour over my every word.
As I previously shared on my dying WordPress platform, I grew up less than five miles from what was once America’s most polluted lake, the Onondaga Lake Superfund Site. Malodorous city swamps and mercury-laden fish whose bodies occasionally bobbed near the docks didn’t drive me away. Instead, it fueled my drive to take action. I learned ways that technology can be used to repair the environmental damage to air, water, and land by profit-driven industries through my undergraduate education as an Environmental Engineer at the University at Buffalo. I was lucky enough to be accepted into a graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a mentor who truly believed in my potential as a scientist. From there, I earned my Master’s of Science in Environment & Resources at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and became a Doctor of Philosophy in Freshwater and Marine Sciences, funded by the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
My hope is that Peatmail will inspire people to protect these valuable ecosystems. I aim to illuminate the numerous ways in which peatlands intertwine with human life with my stories. Join me on this growing publishing platform by reading the newsletter online, or mobile on the Substack App. The environmental blog that I started 9 years ago, definearth, is powering down, but my writing is only evolving into a different form. As always, thank you for reading.