American Elderberry

American elderberries are blooming in Columbia this week. Elderberries are sprawling, deciduous shrubs that grow to a height of 10 feet or ...

The Palmer Divide

In the western U.S., weather is all about elevation and wind direction. As winds are forced to rise, the air cools and, depending upon regio...

Volcanic New Mexico

Mention U.S. volcanoes and most Americans think of Yellowstone, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Hawaii. But there is a wealth of volcanic ...

War and Speech

Humans are more advanced than "lower animals" in three respects: our brain power, our precision hands and our articulate speech. ...

Outflow

Yesterday, a southerly breeze swept warm, humid air into Central Missouri, typical conditions for late May. Only the hazy cloudtops to the ...

Sawhill Ponds

Once a blighted swath of gravel pits, the Sawhill Ponds Nature Preserve is now one of the best wetland areas along the Colorado Front Range....

The Bold Flycatcher

The majority of our woodland flycatchers are small, drab and inconspicuous. An exception is the great crested flycatcher which is larger th...

Plutons

Plutons are rock formations that form underground as intusions of magma. After cooling beneath the surface, this igneous rock is uplifted by...

Front Range Shrublands

The life zones of Colorado's Front Range are determined by elevation, which correlates with annual precipitation. The major cities of t...

Lake Bonneville

The cool, wet climate of the Pleistocene produced a series of large lakes in the Great Basin of the American West. The last of these was La...

Periodic Cicadas

Periodic cicadas, with life cycles of 13 or 17 years, are endemic to eastern North America. In the coming weeks, a brood of 17-year cicadas ...

A New Generation

Though great horned owlets are peering from the nest by March and Canada goslings appear along our lakes in April, it is May that brings us ...

The Birds of Summer

Beginning birdwatchers are often surprised by the large number of species that inhabit residential areas of the Midwest. They are most famil...

The Nature of Obesity

Obesity, the scourge of American society, is not a natural condition. While some mammals such as hippos, whales, walruses and seals have a t...

Columbia River Plateau

Covering most of central and eastern Washington, northern and northeastern Oregon and portions of western Idaho, the Columbia River Plateau ...

Ted Shanks

One of the best birding destinations in the State, the Ted Shanks Conservation Area sits at the confluence of the Salt and Mississippi River...

Canadian High

After a week or more of warm weather, a Canadian front has dropped into the Midwest. Late this morning, it was 78 in Columbia; showers devel...

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds

While twenty species of hummingbird can be found in the U.S., the great majority are limited to the southwestern States; only the ruby-throa...

Mom's Mitochondria

When we discuss DNA and inheritance, we are generally talking about nuclear DNA, half of which is provided by each parent. But there is als...

The Cottontail Strategy

Cottontails face numerous natural enemies, including coyotes, fox, hawks, owls and snakes. Almost half of their newborns die before six week...

Humans and Rivers

This week's flooding in Missouri is just the latest saga in man's long, stormy love affair with rivers. Ever since early humans spr...

Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal, in southeastern Siberia, is surely one of the most fascinating places on Earth. Filling the deepest continental rift on the pl...

The Farallon Plate

During the Mesozoic Era, the Age of Dinosaurs, the oceanic Farallon Plate stretched along the west side of the North and South American Plat...

Death in the Shallows

Last evening, my wife and I took a walk at the Forum Nature Area, in southwest Columbia. Stretching along the floodplain of Hinkson Creek, t...

Nighthawks

Several hot, humid days have brought the common nighthawks back to Columbia. After a winter in South America, they have been circling north...

Dome of Drought

For the past two months, a dome of high pressure has been sitting over the southeastern U.S., aggravating a prolonged regional drought. As ...

Oil and the Tethys Sea

In the late Triassic, 200 million years ago, Pangea began to rift apart as the Tethys Sea spread east to west, separating the northern and s...

Karst Landscapes

Karst landscapes develop where thick layers of soluble bedrock (limestones or dolomites) lie close to the surface and where plentiful moistu...

The Appalachian Plateau

Stretching from the Catskills of New York to northern Alabama, the Appalachian Plateau is a broad uplift of horizontal, late Paleozoic sedim...

Colorado's Birding Capitol

Barr Lake State Park, northeast of Denver, is the undisputed capitol of birding in Colorado. Home to the Colorado Bird Observatory, this Par...

Cane Creek

Cane Creek State Park, in northern Ohio, sits on the south shore of Lake Erie, between Toledo and Sandusky. This relatively small Park, whic...