Art interacts with observation and ecology on numerous planes. There is simply the aspect of personal inspiration, as when the creatures I observe in tidepool surveys or just hiking with friends who know the Sonoran desert become the basis for my Linozoic prints. Along these lines, I’m continually amazed at the diversity and quality of artwork produced by ecologists, samples of which I find myself auctioning off each year at a student benefit auction at the Western Society of Naturalists meeting.
Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich delivered a seminar to the Long Now Foundation a few weeks ago, and you can watch it here. Ehrlich offers an overview of the "state of the world" from the point of view of an ecologist/biologist.
Ehrlich is the co-author of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment.