A Year of Environmental Lunacy

When was the last time you noticed the moon in the sky? Do you know what shape the Moon is tonight? We see the Moon because light from the Sun is reflected off its surface back to Earth. As the Moon revolves around the Earth we see different amounts of its surface lit up and this gives us Moon phases. When it’s fully illuminated we see a full Moon and this happens once in every lunar cycle. Every lunar cycle also has a period when we can’t see the Moon at all – this dark Moon heralds a new Moon and the start of a new cycle. Our calendar months are longer than lunar cycles and so sometimes we may have two full Moons in a month, the second of these is called a Blue Moon. There can be two new Moons in a calendar month too, the second of these is called a Black Moon.

From new Moon to full Moon, the Moon appears to grow bigger – we use the term ‘waxing’. After the full Moon, its shape appears to decrease or ‘wanes’ as less light is reflected towards us. Did you know that in the northern hemisphere, a crescent Moon lying on its right side shows the Moon is waxing whereas the opposite is true when it wanes?

Do you have any ideas where and when to look for the Moon rising and setting?  The Moon rises in the eastern portion of the sky and sets in the west but the exact position and time vary. The full Moon always rises and sets about the same time as the Sun sets and rises. However, as the Moon completes its cycle, it rises later each day which explains why sometimes you can see it out in the day time.

The Moon has an enormous influence on life on Earth and our ancestors would have been well versed in moon lore as they were in much closer touch with nature and the environment than we are today. They would know that it affected some animal behaviours, tides, and light. The light of a full Moon aids night time hunting for many animals and is still a friend to farmers when it comes to harvesting time – the Harvest Moon is aptly named perhaps!

Moonlight is used for navigation by many creatures, particularly nocturnal ones; some of whom can calculate the angle of polarized light to orient themselves. The Moon (along with the Sun) also influences Earth’s tides, and hence the movement of water and lives of those creatures living in the intertidal zone. Sandhoppers for example, live buried in sandy beaches and use both the Sun and the Moon to help them navigate between sea and shore.

The Moon is a like a clock too, and research is still discovering how our own body rhythms and those of animal and plant life are linked to lunar cycles. Perhaps the most well-known of these is the spawning of the Great Barrier Reef corals which use the lunar cycle as a trigger for a spectacle that takes place between October and December just after the full moon.

In many ancient cultures, from indigenous North Americans to ancient Celts, each Moon cycle was given a special name, to remind people about that time of the year in nature and its associated phenomena. It was important for people to think about the detail of the changing year and know what the natural world was likely to be doing. Often, this was a matter of survival as people lived so closely in tune with the Earth.

The last December full Moon for example, was often known in the northern hemisphere as the ‘Cold Moon’, or the ‘Long Night’s Moon’ occurring as it does in the same month as the Winter Solstice. As this new year begins, what phenomena might we want to be aware of? What can we notice, record, map and share? As the Nature Education Park initiative develops, it is an ideal opportunity to think about the combination of space and time and notice the natural world around us in a far more nuanced way.