The conventional portrayal of the Everglades depicts a preserve of wilderness and water stretching for more than 1.5 million acres across Southern Florida. But Adam Nadel’s photo essay, “Getting the Water Right,” emphasizes the vulnerability of the Everglades ecosystem to human encroachment. The exhibit, 30 pictures in all, will be at the Peabody Museum in New Haven until Jan. 18. Nadel undertook the project with anthropologist Jessica R. Cattelino, an associate professor at UCLA.

Nadel, who grew up in Chester, has won international recognition for his work, including First Prize at World Press Photo and First Place at Pictures of the Year International. He has had exhibits at the Field Museum in Chicago and at United Nations headquarters in New York. He describes his Everglades photographs as a project that combines photojournalism with both science and human rights. It was this combination that interested the Peabody.

“Nadel’s work is really at the intersection of art and science,” said Richard Kissel, director of public programs at the museum. He noted that Nadel’s photographs come within the purview of the Peabody, a natural history museum, perhaps best known for its dinosaur fossils. “Photographs certainly fall within our mission. And this is a great story,” he adds.

What underlies Nadel’s interest in the Everglades, and is responsible for the title of the photo essay, is the looming water crisis in Florida.

“Florida is going to run out of water, ” he says, explaining the Everglades is the state’s most important aquifer and one that development is degrading and destroying.

The exhibit includes a photograph of suburban tract housing with seeded and manicured lawns, built where once the natural grasses of the Everglades grew. Nadel recalled that when a homeowner was told that his dwelling was in the Everglades, the man was disbelieving. “He said he didn’t live in the Everglades,” Nadel recalled.

The photograph of the Florida Cattlemen’s Miss Sweetheart of 2012 is part of the story of an unexpected alliance between Florida cattlemen and the Audubon Society, usually a crusader for leaving areas unspoiled and ungrazed. The society, however, supports the cattle ranchers, believing that ranching is better for the fragile ecosystem than farming or development because it contributes less phosphorous to the water.

“Only in Florida can you find these connections,” Nadel points out.

The Everglades, Nadel noted, have long been the subject of debate in Florida. In the 19th century, he said, there was a proposal to remove the Native Americans from the area, drain the watershed and build canals. Nadel would like his photographs to prompt a discussion on the future of the Everglades, focusing on what activities are invasive, what activities should be allowed and how to balance the needs of people, the economy and the environment.

“I don’t have a solution; I don’t think any politician or think tank has the answers,” he notes.

Nadel not only took the photographs but also wrote the captions for the exhibit himself. The work took some three years to complete, and Nadel was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Magnum Foundation. In addition, Nadel served as an artist in residence at the Everglades National Park for a month during the project.

Photography has fascinated Nadel since he was a student at Chester Elementary School, when then-principal Jack Brogan first introduced him to the art of taking pictures. His photographs have appeared in publications from the New York Times to the Sunday Times of London. Earlier large-scale photographic essays include a series on malaria and another called “Non-combatants,” on the ways in which civilian lives are disrupted by warfare. Despite his reputation, Nadel admitted that earning a living as a photographer, has its challenges.

“When you decide to live a creative life, you give up certain types of stability,” he says.

With his wife Sarah and four-year-old daughter Raya, Nadel recently moved to a new apartment in Queens.

Upcoming for Nadel is a new project, again at the intersection of photojournalism and current issues, on structural flaws in the justice system, focusing on the work of the Bronx Defenders, a New York City legal services clinic.

“It’s about how the application of laws and the failure to apply laws equally leads to injustice and gross violations of civil rights,” he explains.

Some of the photos in “Getting Water Right” have been exhibited in smaller groups, but the entire series will be on display at the Peabody show. In addition, “Getting Water Right” will be exhibited at Everglades National Park itself next year. Nadel’s goal, wherever the show is mounted, is to make the environmental questions the exhibit highlights comprehensible to a wider audience.

“I am trying to make these issues more transparent,” he said. “I want to ask questions, to put ideas into play.”

IF YOU GO

What: Photo exhibit, “Getting Water Right”

Where: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Avenue, New Haven

When: Through Jan. 18, 2016

Info: www.peabody.yale.edu or call (203) 432-5050