As the climate warms, devastating fires are increasingly likely. The 2020 fires pushed the Southern Rockies beyond the historical average. Is there hope for the Northern Rockies?
A water pump outside a home on the Navajo Nation in Thoreau, N.M.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Crowding is increasingly affecting all kinds of public lands. Adjoining communities need to find ways to manage it, or risk harm to the attractions that make them a destination.
An irrigation canal moves Colorado River water through farm fields in California’s Imperial Valley.
Photo by Sandy Huffaker / AFP via Getty Images
Southwest states have bought time with an agreement between California, Arizona and Nevada to cut Colorado River water use by about 14%. Now comes the hard part.
Fires are increasing in high mountain areas that rarely burned in the past.
John McColgan, Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service
This year’s Sierra snowpack is looking a lot like 1983’s, and that was a year of flooding and mudslide disasters. A meteorologist explains what’s ahead.
Sprinklers water a lettuce field in Holtville, California with Colorado River water.
Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images
Two decades of drought have reduced the river’s flow by one-third compared to historical averages. The Biden administration is considering mandatory cuts to some states’ water allocations.
Hotter-burning fires and a warming climate make it harder for seedlings to survive.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Over 50 fire ecologists across the Western U.S. took an unprecedented look at how forests in thousands of locations are recovering from fire in a changing climate. The results were alarming.
A gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park.
NPS/Jim Peaco
Less than a century ago, Colorado hunted, trapped and poisoned all the wolves within its borders. Today it’s restoring them – a change that reflects a profound shift in human thinking.
The white ‘bathtub ring’ around Lake Powell, which is roughly 110 feet high, shows the former high water mark.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Fifty years ago, the Salton Sea was a draw for boaters and fishermen; today it’s an ecological time bomb. Two water experts who served on a state review panel describe its proposed rescue plan.
Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, celebrates her re-election to a U.S. Senate seat representing Nevada in November 2022.
AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt
Wildfires are remaking western US forests. Decisions about managing forests that have burned should factor in how fires change animal behavior and interactions between predators and prey.
Low-tech irrigation on a cattle ranch near Whitewater, Colo., June 30, 2021.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Stemming the water crisis in the western US will require cities and rural areas to work together to make water use on farms – the largest source of demand – more efficient.
The white ‘bathtub ring’ around Lake Mead, shown on Jan. 11, 2022, is roughly 160 feet high and reflects falling water levels.
George Rose/Getty Images
A Western scholar proposes allocating water from the Colorado River based on percentages of its actual flow instead of fixed amounts that exceed what’s there – and including tribes this time.
Lightning during a monsoon storm in southern Arizona, Saguaro National Park.
Pete Gregoire, NOAA
Monsoons are weather patterns that bring thunderstorms and heavy rains to hot, dry areas when warm, moist ocean air moves inland. They’re challenging to forecast, especially in a changing climate.
In some drought-stricken parts of the Southwest, water arrives by truck.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Cities and farmers in the Southwest are resorting to unsustainable strategies to pull in more water. Iran has tried many of these strategies and shows how they can go wrong.
Samual A. Graham Dean, and William B. Stapp Collegiate Professor of Environmental Education, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan