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A Planet That Is Forgetting Its Shape At sunrise, Arabia’s dunes breathe—intact, self-regulating, timeless. Yet just beyond, concrete corridors and grids cleave habitats honed over millennia, a pattern mirrored from Amazonian forests to African savannas. Nearly 75% of Earth’s terrestrial surface has been altered by human systems (IPBES, 2018), eroding not only biodiversity but also the ecological “memory” that landscapes need to regenerate. Deserts are pushed into cities, for

Everyone knows that the Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, often called the “lung of the earth.” But how many of us have heard that the war-torn African continent is also the home of the “second lung of the earth,” known as the Congo Basin? The Congo Basin The Congo Basin is the second-largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon. It spans across six African countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Eq

The Sahara Desert, covering over 9.2 million square kilometers across 11 countries between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, is the largest hot desert on Earth. While often perceived as a uniform expanse of sand, the Sahara is a region of considerable ecological and geological diversity. Its landscape includes dunes (ergs), solid rock plateaus (hamadas), gravel plains (regs), volcanic massifs, mountain ranges such as the Ahaggar and Tibesti, and some of the driest hyper-ari

When night falls across the world’s deserts, a transformation unfolds. The air, thick with shimmer by day, cools until silence settles on dunes, stony plateaus, salt flats, and rocky escarpments stretching impossibly to the horizon. For the untrained eye, deserts are nature’s blank pages: empty, lifeless, and unyielding. But scientific eyes know better: deserts, in all their forms, are vital theaters of survival, innovation, and history, teeming with secrets waiting to be rev

When we imagine the climate crisis, our minds drift toward the cinematic: the roar of a cyclone flattening a city, the orange glow of a wildfire consuming a forest, or floodwaters sweeping away cars. We have been trained to fear the spectacle. Yet, some of the most profound devastation is unfolding without a sound. It is happening grain by grain, crack by crack, in a process known as "slow violence."  This is the force of weathering—the relentless grind of heat, salt, wind, a

There was a time when my small talks began with:  “The weather is nice today, no?”  I don’t say it so casually anymore. I think I am privileged, so my weather is still “nice.” I can regulate it with fans, heaters, AC, or simply step indoors. But is the weather nice for everyone?  Back in my childhood I remember that Bangladesh’s summers meant load-shedding. Generators were rare, IPS was a luxury, fans stopped mid-rotation like paused moments. Even then somehow, the heat was t

Climate change and food insecurity are two of the most pressing sustainable development challenges of our time. Yet agricultural policy keeps chasing long-term climate change targets while the real threat to farmers and rural communities goes largely unaddressed. That threat is the wild swings in weather: sudden floods wipe out the season’s rice, heatwaves scorch wheat before it ripens, and droughts turn soil to dust almost overnight. These shocks destroy harvests, spike food

Weather is a complicated, interconnected system that goes way beyond the local prediction. The distinction between the transient weather conditions and the more stable context of climate is inherent: whereas weather can change within hours, climate changes within decades. One of the most impressive examples of this difference is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO a natural and periodic process within the Pacific Ocean, that alternates between warm (El Nino) and cold (L

When the cold season hits Bangladesh in November-February every winter, the skies in Dhaka, Chattogram, Narayanganj, Gazipur and other large cities of the country appear perfectly familiar and at the same time terribly threatening. The cityscape is regularly blanketed with a heavy and gray blanket. It might seem to the careless eye an air of mist or fog, but this haze of seasonal fog is much darker. It is smog, a heavy layer of air pollutants that suffocates millions of peopl

On a winter night at high latitude, the sky feels close, almost tangible. People travel thousands of kilometers for this moment, eyes lifted, breath visible, waiting for the aurora to appear. Yet long before the Sun sends charged particles racing toward Earth, the outcome has already been decided much closer to the ground. The weather, not space, is the gatekeeper.  Auroras are born far above the clouds, where solar particles collide with Earth’s magnetic field and excite oxy

To walk across the Earth is to walk across a battlefield. We tend to view our planet as a static stage—solid rock, immovable mountains, permanent coastlines. But this is an illusion of time. To a geologist, the Earth is a churning, volatile entity caught in a state of  dynamic equilibrium .  Every valley and peak you see is the result of an ancient, silent war between two colossal forces. From below, endogenic forces (driven by the planet’s internal heat) shove the crust upwa

Figure: Tohoku Earthquake of Japan Earth holds the record of all violent things it has gone through. Disasters do not occur in a normally tranquil planet; rather, they are geologic chapters. Valleys are raised by earthquakes, islands are formed by volcanoes, shorelines are redrawn by tsunamis, and mountainsides are cut along landslides. These abrupt breaks, which have been piled up over millions of years, are what have formed the landscapes that we recognize nowadays. Learnin

Figure: Aerial Photograph of the Damage of the Atomic Bombing in hiroshima Land normally changes with patience. Mountains rise slowly, rivers wander inch by inch, and forests thicken over centuries. The Earth edits itself in small strokes. War ignores that rhythm. In moments of violence, landscapes are remade with a speed that feels unnatural, as if time itself has been forced to sprint. Wherever armies move and bombs fall, the land becomes a witness and a casualty.  Imagine

Climate change poses growing risks to the world’s landscapes, deeply influencing economic opportunities and community resilience across regions.  Rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns have led to dramatic effects on landforms—altering growing seasons, increasing wildfire risk, and reducing ecosystem services in drylands and coastal zones. For example, reductions in crop and livestock productivity are already being observed, with projections showing worsening

Figure: Amazing Tabletop Mountains (Tepuis) Beneath the world's most dramatic geological formations lies an unseen universe—one where evolution has written its most extraordinary chapters in darkness, isolation, and stone. While tourists photograph the grandeur of towering mountains and yawning caves, scientists venture deeper, uncovering ecological mysteries that challenge our understanding of life itself. These iconic landforms are not merely scenic wonders; they are biolog

Continents don’t sit still. They drift, collide, drown, rise, freeze, burn, and bloom over millions of years, like slow dancers whose steps are measured in tectonic shudders rather than beats. What we call “landscape” is really the surface expression of planetary restlessness: mountains kneaded upward by plate collisions, deserts sculpted by shifting climates, river deltas braided by sediment and monsoon, and volcanic fields marking the places where Earth’s mantle still breat

Figure: Tumpek Uduh or Tumpek Wariga in Bali, Indonesia Communities around the world have developed rituals to directly address the land to remind people that soil, forests, mountains, and waters are not inanimate resources but rather living partners. Such rituals come in different shapes, languages, and beliefs, but they all have a deeper reality of one: that land cannot be utilized without acknowledgment, appreciation, and moderation. The knowledge of such practices can ass

In this interview, I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Bahzad Al Akhras, a Palestinian medical doctor from Gaza and a mental health researcher, about the changing landscapes of Palestine, particularly in the context of geopolitics and the genocide. He shares his personal experiences and reflections on how the daily realities shape the ways people experience the country’s landscapes.    Era: Thank you for agreeing to the interview. My first question, to introduce you to

A Hypothetical Assessment Based on Population Density, Urban Morphology, and the Status of Green & Blue Infrastructure Executive Summary  Dhaka, on e of the world’s most densely populated megacities, faces severe seismic vulnerability due to its proximity to active tectonic structures, including the Madhupur and Dauki Fault systems. This research presents a hypothetical earthquake-impact analysis for magnitude 6.5, 7.0, and 8.0 events with an assumed epicenter 50 km from Dha

Photo by Ryan Woo and Joe Cash According to the International Monetary Fund, the People’s Republic of China is a global superpower and the world's second-largest economy, with a projected GDP of $19.23 trillion in 2025. (IMF, July 2025) Over the last decade, this country has had a tremendous influence on geopolitics, global trade, and technology. However, amid the symbols of its high-tech and industrial supremacy, shiny city skyscrapers, high-speed rail, and overseas bridges,