A text comes in. It reads “Meet me at the abandoned gas station past Lexington and Thomas.†The car starts up and heads down the dimly lit streets. Soon, headlights illuminate the dark gas station. There is already a truck parked behind the shuttered garage. The buyer opens their car door and steps toward the
Slightly off the Californian coast, battle lines are drawn. On one side lies a purple, spiny, extraterrestrial-looking creature intent on eating all plant life in its path. On the other, an equally eccentric echinoderm in the shape of a star awaits that same creature as its next meal. The battleground between them is overshadowed by
We are at the brink of a severe climate crisis caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide. Anthropogenic activities such as burning fossil fuels have significantly elevated the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. As a matter of fact, the global CO2 average has hit a new
Growing up in Arizona, we were told that people could go to jail for damaging a Saguaro cactus. Saguaros are a protected symbol of the Southwest. Yet in 2019, videos shot by Kevin Dahl, the Arizona Senior Program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, recorded bulldozers uprooting Saguaro cacti and other desert shrubs at
After two days of driving, our U-haul rounded the final corner of the gravel road leading to our destination, The Rocky Mountain Biological Station, affectionately known as RMBL. We were in Gothic, Colorado, which is four hours of windy mountain roads up from the nearest city, Colorado Springs. My labmate and I were transporting over
In recent years, it feels like we have watched parts of the world be swallowed whole by fire, painting a very apocalyptic picture of the future. Nearly 40,000 square miles in Australia were decimated by bushfires last year. California's Camp Fire displaced about 50,000 residents, and Indonesia saw over 2 million acres of land consumed
For a long time, ecologists have asked: why are there so many species? How is it possible that there can be so many species of, for example, phytoplankton that exist at the same time? They all use the same resources, like light, carbon and nitrogen, and all are prey to the same types of animals,
When you think of salt, your mind likely wanders to the last bit of food you seasoned. We all know salt improves the taste of food. However, most probably don't recognize its importance in human history or its role in agriculture. It was once lauded for economic value (hence the phrase “worth one's saltâ€), as
The US Atlantic coast is a dynamic, living landscape. Georgia in particular displays a picturesque mosaic of barrier islands, salt marsh meadows, maritime forests, brackish marsh and river networks snaking up the Coastal Plain. Together, coastal habitats form a dynamic ecosystem capable of protecting the coastline, storing carbon, filtering water and providing coastal regions with
Alternatively, this post could have been titled, My Guilty Conscience Series: Plastics. This blog post has been a long time coming – given the fact that I (and many others) have been conditioned to “reduce, reuse, and recycle†before we could even multiply. Yet, as I continue to diligently organize my empty jars and cans
Dr. Diana Six is a professor of Forest Entomology and Pathology at the University of Montana. Dr. Six's work focuses on bark beetles, their symbiotic fungi, climate change, and what these factors mean for forest health. Her work has received the attention of the media and she has presented at TedX and has been featured on
Cancer, a complex disease caused by an accumulation of mutations in our DNA, affects millions of individuals each year. Cancer poses a very serious threat, but is it contagious? The short answer is “noâ€, at least for us humans. In humans, the only way to truly transfer cancer from one person to the next is
