How climate change makes wildfire more likely to happen all year round.
Wildfire
Posted inAugust 1, 2022: Our Fiery Future
Protecting neighborhoods from future flames
Equitable wildfire preparedness requires community-level fixes.
Posted inArticles
The funky politics of wildfire right now
After New Mexico’s record-breaking fires, the politics of wildfire are morphing into weird configurations.
Posted inArticles
Alaska’s fire season is off to a blazing start
Drought, heat and thunderstorms have started fires across the state.
Posted inJuly 1, 2022: Living with Rivers
Landslide risk is on the rise thanks to climate change, and states are looking to identify hazards
Washington — home to deadliest landslide in U.S. history — is working to prevent future loss of life by scanning the state for new threats.
Posted inArticles
In the wake of fires and floods
Climate disasters across the West wreak havoc on economies and livelihoods.
Posted inArticles
New Mexico wildfire sparks anger at Forest Service
An enormous blaze dredged up longstanding resentments toward federal officials
Posted inArticles
Wildfire and detours on the Pacific Crest Trail
A hiker is caught in smoke and decision-making when the Carr Fire broke out in 2018.
Posted inJuly 1, 2022: Living with Rivers
You have a second body
And it’s tethered — in ways both identifiable and mysterious — to microbes, whales, ice shelves and landfills.
Posted inArticles
Unprecedented fire, wind and snowmelt in the Southwest
This may not be the driest winter, the worst fire season or even the warmest spring on record, but taken together the conditions truly are superlative.
Posted inArticles
Ashes and silver linings: Marshall Fire survivors reflect
Colorado’s most destructive fire leaves behind grief and slow recoveries.
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
The revenge of Big Tech
When tech companies rule the world, what could go wrong?
Posted inArticles
Why rural communities struggle to bring in much-needed federal grants
A new analysis suggests that over half of communities in the West lack the capacity to take advantage of infrastructure bill funding. Now what?
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
What does it mean to live well on an overheating planet?
A walk through the Quinault rainforest leads to a cascade of questions.
Posted inArticles
Air quality report card flunks the West
Western states dominate lists of where short-term particulate and ozone pollution are the worst.
Posted inArticles
How one Wyoming mule deer won friends and influenced science
Jo the deer offered researchers a look into migrations and how long it takes deer to visit a forest after a fire.
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
There are millions of acres of ‘failing’ rangelands, data shows
54 million acres of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management aren’t meeting the agency’s own land-health standards.
Posted inMarch 1, 2022: The Cloning Conundrum
Will we share the same dismal fate as glaciers and forests?
Two recent books look at the parallels between human, ecological and societal illness.
Posted inMarch 1, 2022: The Cloning Conundrum
The place that coal built and fire burned
Extractive industry laid the infrastructure for the suburban sprawl that fueled Colorado’s destructive Marshall Fire.
Posted inArticles
Wildfires’ unequal impacts on pregnant people
An interview with one researcher studying the effect of wildfire on pregnancy outcomes in the West.