Deadwood as Stage, Beetles as Evidence: Translating Forest Degradation into a Web-Based Narrative in Crete

This article presents a design-led environmental media prototype for translating saproxylic beetle evidence into a web-based narrative about slow forest degradation in Crete. The prototype uses five interface scenes to convert ecological constructs, including deadwood continuity, decay-stage diversity, microclimate refuge, drought-stress coupling, pathogen/vector risk, and fragmentation, into comparison, gradient, threshold, and reachability tasks. The contribution is methodological rather than ecological: it proposes an evidence-to-interface translation matrix and an anti-cutesification/anti-spectacle grammar for making proxy variables, uncertainty cues, and versioned sources inspectable in public-facing environmental media. A small mixed-background reader-response session (N = 18) is used as a boundary test of readability. The session suggests that many readers could retell the deadwood-removal inference and distinguish structural loss from simple character appeal, while also revealing recurring misreadings around proxy status, scenario precision, and particle-haze risk cues. The article therefore positions the prototype as a proof-of-concept for auditable environmental-media translation, with broader claims about public use, institutional uptake, and long-term durability reserved for future comparative and longitudinal testing.