Abstract
Addressing ecological problems requires an ontological position that sees environmental processes simultaneously as semiotically mediated and rooted in ecosystems. For example, problems such as the effects of global environmental change, animals that are coping with urbanized environments and human migration due to environmental degradation bond sign processes and the flows of matter and energy. Ecosemiotics provides a robust conceptual framework for studying these topics. The toolbox proposed in this paper combines the ecosemiotic sphere as a general concept for ecosemiotic research; activity centers, which are loci in the ecosemiotic sphere with distinct identities and dynamics, bringing along change; relations between activity centers that are the primary object of ecosemiotic study. The proposed framework gathers some specific concepts, such as, among others, affordance, semiotic pollution, ecological code, meaning transfer, semiocide. I will argue that ecosemiotics holds a good potential for analyzing crucial contemporary environmental problems.
