iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 01/09/2026

Landing in North Dakota and most of these points of light out the window are not a house or a building but an open flame, burning 24/7. We’ve set the land on fire.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 31/08/2026

Here’s how it opens, before going into a detailed account of the previous abundance of bison, passenger pigeons, wetlands and water dwellers, beavers, predators, and forests in Indiana, based largely on primary historical sources

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 31/08/2026

I wrote this nearly 11,000 word deeply researched essay about the history of natural heritage in Indiana, the mind-boggling scale of vibrant biodiversity we've lost, and the lies we've told and continue to tell ourselves to cover it up. zacharyammerman.substack.com/p/once-and-f...

zacharyammerman.substack.com

Once and Future Indiana

Thundering herds, skies gone dark, an inland sea of wetlands, and forests unfathomable to the modern imagination

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 18/08/2026

Indiana’s Grand Kankakee Marsh — once one of the largest wetlands on the continent, rivalling the Everglades. It was drained starting in the 1850s and was basically entirely lost to agriculture by 1920.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 17/08/2026

A lot of Indiana is underwater after massive flooding — In many ways that’s a return to the state’s natural condition.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 15/08/2026

so that today there remains scarcely enough old growth forest in the entire state to cover the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 15/08/2026

and by 1870 tens of millions of acres had been consumed by ax and plow and, like the buffalo, passenger pigeon, wolves, bears, and mountain lions who once called our state home, were replaced by hubris,

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 15/08/2026

almost immediately after the arrival of Europeans and the forced removal of the indigenous peoples of Indiana, who had managed the forest sustainably for endless generations, the once-expansive forests of Indiana declined measurably in size,

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 15/08/2026

they described multitudinous trees in the range of 200 feet tall, 90 feet to the first limb, and 25 feet in girth, and sycamore trees so large that 29 men were able to stand side-by-side within one’s trunk

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 15/08/2026

naturalists who had explored the jungles of South America were mesmerized by the size of our trees and the seeming endlessness of the woodland expanse,

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 15/08/2026

Indiana was once more than 80% covered by woods, with its 20 million acres of primeval forest nearly long enough to encircle the globe one and a quarter times in a mile-wide band; early Europeans arriving in the region that would later become our state described a realm of forests without end,

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 13/08/2026

« a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. it is wrong when it tends otherwise. » Aldo Leopold

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 06/08/2026

Early European accounts describe herds so large they took hours to cross the Wabash River near Vincennes. Now, not a single wild, unfenced buffalo remains in the state (although there are some fenced at Kankakee Sands in the northwest). The amount that we have lost is staggering.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 06/08/2026

ndiana's Buffalo Trace! An ancient buffalo highway that cut a deep path into the land from the prairies of Illinois to the grasslands of Kentucky, cutting across the thick forests of Indiana, and making several detours to salt licks.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 06/08/2026

Midwest Historic Land Cover: A story of large-scale forest and prairie loss. Data from: HISTORIC LAND COVER DATA. Land use and land cover changes in the contiguous United States from 1630 to 2020. Culley, Alexis V. et al. (DOI: 10.1007/s10980-025-02163-4)

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 05/08/2026

Midwest Mycorrhizal Density 🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 05/08/2026

Midwest Forest Integrity Index 🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳

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Reposted by Zach

Deputy Councilor for Urban Affairs, D13 @williamhazen.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Love this map so much! h/t @zacharyammerman.com for your talent in making it!

Map of Indiana Intercity bus routes mapped using a subway style map

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 28/02/2026

The Daoist concept of ziran 自然 open.substack.com/pub/zacharya...

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 25/02/2026

yeah I definitely didn’t give permission to him to use my map or know he was using this for the record! I don’t live in DC anymore but if I lived in DC I’d proudly vote for @aparnafordc.bsky.social not whoever this dude is

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Reposted by Zach

Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

I've talked to people on the ground about the strike here tomorrow, and the single thing everyone brings up is just how shockingly wide the support for the strike is. Businesses that no one would have expected to support it are doing so.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 22/01/2026

I increasingly view AI like I do meat-eating: there is not right way to do the wrong thing. AI uses absolutely insane amounts of resources for only marginal (and very largely over-hyped) benefits, if that. It's not even close to being worth the exponential increase in resource-use

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 22/01/2026

some of my thoughts on AI, with an Indiana focus (was originally written for something else, retooled it for this). medium.com/@zachammerma...

medium.com

Ceding Our Humanity

Thoughts on the Environmental, Societal, and Philosophical Problems of AI.

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Reposted by Zach

Jason D. Salvagni @salvagni.org · 18/12/2025

Again, we don't have an Opposition Party, not even close; these people are a dangerous fucking joke, the lowest bar possible. We have a room full of people who are "colleagues" with fascists, who protect their capital at all cost & do the bare minimum to gaslight enough people to get reelected.

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Reposted by Zach

HydrologyNL @hydrology.nl · 27/08/2025

Interesting map by @zacharyammerman.com: Midwest Biodiversity Intactness.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 30/03/2025

and this was in rural hill country well well outside of nova or the dc suburbs on the way to the mountains

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 30/03/2025

driving through very rural virginia near west virginia today we saw a quite large group (20ish) of anti trump protestors with canadian and ukrainian flags with a much much smaller (1-2 people) group of counter protestors

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

if any of this interests you I highly recommend any of Peter Cozzens's books, this one is on the Creek War specifically and is excellent:

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend effectively ended the Creek War, which started mostly as an internal conflict between pro-American Lower Creeks and more militant anti-American Upper Creeks.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

The Creek War was a continuation of Tecumseh's War and part of the larger War of 1812, and also led in the following years to the First Seminole War in Florida as some of the remaining Red Sticks fled into Florida and joined with the melting-pot Seminole.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

Roughly 2 million acres were also taken from his Cherokee allies.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

In thanks for their efforts in fighting on the side of the United States side in the war, Jackson forced all of the Creeks (including his allies who fought alongside him!) to give up 20 million acres of native land (about half of the present-day state of Alabama) to the US.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

After the battle, Jackson downplayed the Cherokees' role, despite it being critical to him winning the battle. This battle effectively ended the Creek War, which was led by the Red Sticks (Upper Creek) band of Creek Indians against the US and pro-American Lower Creeks.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

The battle was won thanks to Jackson's Native American Cherokee allies, who swam across the river to attack the Creeks from the rear to break the impasse while Jackson himself led an almost entirely ineffective barrage on the front of the Creek village.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

In the battle, Andrew Jackson (a real POS) led one of the worst wartime atrocities the United States ever committed against Native Americans, massacring hundreds of Red Sticks, including women, children, and the elderly, who were trying to flee across the Tallapoosa River

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend took place on this day in 1814. This is a map of the battle I researched, pitched and made as lead map and infographic designer for a nationwide US history platform being rolled out in middle and high schools now.

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Zach @zacharyammerman.com · 27/03/2025

Vous pouvez télécharger cette carte (ainsi que pour tous les autres arrondissements de Montréal) en haute résolution et gratuitement sur mon site ici: www.zacharyammerman.com/portfolio/ma...

zacharyammerman.com

Zachary Ammerman

Mapmaker. Designer, Data Viz Wiz, Infographic Artist, Strategic Communications Specialist

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