Even the words we use to express our connection to nature are dwindling as the demands of modern life isolate us from the non-human world, according to a new study by psychologist Miles Richardson of the University of Derby in the UK.

As a proxy for humans' connection to nature across time, Richardson turned to books, specifically data lifted from Google Books Ngram Viewer for the period 1800-2019. He mapped the frequency with which authors used 28 words associated with nature: words like river, meadow, beak, coast, and bough.

He avoided species names because, he reasons, they " tend to be more technical or impersonal… [and] are also more susceptible to reflecting wildlife population trends or being influenced by factors like the proliferation of identification guides."

" These wo

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