After reporting on climate change and natural disasters in Australia, South America, the U.S., and Mongolia, science journalist Julia Kumari Drapkin grew frustrated with the failure of traditional media to convey how climate impacts our daily lives. Part of the problem is scientific. Climate models, and the climate itself, work over large expanses of space […]
Sarah Jane Keller
Posted inGoat
Counting–and counting on–visitors
If you’re weary of modern ills like private companies collecting your information in the name of the almighty dollar, maybe you’ll want to escape to a wilderness area for the weekend. There’s no barcode scanner, and no one to meddle in your business. You are free to move about undetected and get messed-up 127 Hours-style […]
Posted inGoat
The endangered species to-do list
One summer, I spent so much time fishing the stocked pond behind my parent’s house that middle-school boys called me “bass-master.” Most of my 14th birthday presents were lures. I grew up near the headwaters of the Potomac River in western Maryland, and my dad used to hike into those streams to tempt wily brook […]
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Want to put Western weather on the map?
Some of the earliest weather forecasts began with people scattered across the country who regularly telegraphed observations back to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as part of a mid-1800s program to solve “the problem of American storms.” Though scientific tools have advanced far beyond the telegraph, the challenge of forecasting small-scale, fast-acting weather events, […]
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Managing Western water from space
Over the last 40 years, images from space have shown us a lot about the changing West. Data beamed down from NASA’s Landsat satellites have revealed how cities like Las Vegas are oozing into the desert, how bark beetles are spreading through and killing Colorado’s forests and how ecosystems recover from wildfires. Besides wowing us […]
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Bakken tech boomlet?
Viewed from space at night, North Dakota’s sparsely populated Northern Plains appear to harbor a mysterious mega-city. But really, the burst of lights on the prairie is natural gas burning in the state’s oil patch. Enough energy is wasted through natural gas flaring each day to heat half a million homes daily. Flaring is not […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A new normal for snow
Idaho hydrologist Phil Morrisey has been fielding some complaints lately. Although the Natural Resources Conservation Service — the federal agency he works for — reports normal snowpack, skiers say they’re schussing through thin powder. And they have a point, Morrissey says: The agency just started using a new standard for measuring average snowfall — and […]
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Who is writing New Mexico’s water regulations?
Updated on 5/22/13. New Mexico environmental regulators under Republican governor Susana Martinez are overseeing attempts to roll back a suite of groundwater regulations. While the administration’s argument for loosening rules on dairies, mines and oil and gas marches to the drumbeat of jobs, jobs, jobs, all they have to do is look in their own […]
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Public pollution data make for a less-filthy West
At the end of last year, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long-stalled Clean Air Act standard to limit air pollution from cement kilns, which spew massive quantities of toxic mercury into the air — though the agency is drawing the ire of environmental groups for delaying implementation until 2015. One reason the public and […]
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Get used to the new normal
There’s fine dust in the tire ruts now Along the old feed road They’re workin’ on a six year drought Just so you know -James McMurtry, “Six Year Drought” If it seems like there’s less snow on the ground than there used to be, it’s not your imagination. This year, the folks at the Natural […]
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Native women fail to find justice
Updated 11:28 a.m. Jan 11, 2013 In 2005, two Native American women in Oklahoma were kidnapped, blindfolded, and raped by three non-native men. Because they were blindfolded, they didn’t know if they were assaulted on state, federal, or tribal land. And, due to a tragic gap in the justice system, the location of the crime […]