Heat Waves and Global Warming

As the extreme heat expands eastward over the next few days, the subject of global warming will, not doubt, get plenty of air time. How soo...

Big Oak Tree

Before the arrival of white settlers, a vast swamp forest covered most of the Mississippi floodplain. The fertile soil supported the growth...

Dolly's U-Turn

As Hurricane Dolly made landfall in South Texas last week, a dome of high pressure was forming over the Southern Plains. Following the oute...

Springville Marsh

At the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, a vast wetland, known as the Big Spring Prairie, covered much of northwestern Ohio. Today, Springvil...

The Pliocene

The Pliocene, the last epoch of the Tertiary Period, stretched from 10 to 2 million years ago. As it began, the Rio Grande Rift was forming...

Estivation

Estivation is essentially hibernation during periods of excessive heat or prolonged drought. An adaptation to environmental stress, this ph...

Northeast Deluge

While the weather news was focused on Hurricane Dolly yesterday, a perfect rainmaker was developing across the Northeastern States. A cold ...

Dolly Watch

The Weather Channel, starved for tropical excitement over the past two years, is surely thrilled to have Tropical Storm Dolly spinning in th...

Birding the Treetops

While it is relatively easy to observe birds that feed on the ground or in low shrubs, it can be a challenge to identify species that inhabi...

July Soup

After five days in the thin, dry air of Colorado, I have returned to the hot, muggy summer of the American Midwest. Though the intense suns...

The Pope and Global Warming

Pope Benedict, in Sydney, Australia, for a Catholic Convention, is receiving a great deal of attention for his concern about global warming....

Singing in the Heat

On hot, summer days, bird song is generally subdued. The high-pitched twitter of chimney swifts, brief tunes from the ever-cheerful chickad...

March of the Collared Dove

The Eurasian collared dove, a native of India and the Middle East, had spread into Europe by the early 1900s; within another fifty years, it...

Vertical Birding

One of the many good things about living at the base of a mountain range is that a whole series of life zones lie within a short distance. ...

A Natural Inventory

Avid bird watchers are notorious for keeping lists. They compile a life list, a list for the year, day lists and location lists. Such activi...

Plates and Continents

Amateur geologists often assume that the continental and oceanic plates coincide with the observable physical geography. In fact, most of t...

The American Antelope

Pronghorns are common across the High Plains, from the western Dakotas to Mexico, and on sage grasslands of the Intermountain West. Natives...

Visual Pollution

As the political season gets underway, candidate signs are popping up all over Columbia. Some lawns host four or five candidates while other...

Man and his Animals

Humans have been capturing, breeding and using other animal species since the end of the Pleistocene. Dogs were the first to be domesticate...

Red Rocks Park

Internationally famous for its outdoor, rock-walled amphitheater, Red Rocks Park stretches across the base of Mt. Morrison, just west of Den...

The Shade Tree Bird

Northern orioles are common summer birds throughout much of the U.S. Not forest birds, they prefer wood margins and open woodlands with larg...

Gondwana and Marsupials

Throughout most of the Permian, Earth's land masses had merged into the mega-continent of Pangea. Then, in the Triassic (about 200 mill...

Recycling and Consumption

Many Americans take part in recycling programs. Every garbage day, they set out their basket of newspapers, soda cans and beer bottles. Ye...

The Mammal Explosion

Though mammals first appeared in the Triassic, some 200 million years ago, they lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs and remained rather sma...

Volcanic Islands

While Greenland, Madagascar and Tasmania rifted away from other Continental land masses, the great majority of oceanic islands are volcanic ...

Rock Rabbits

Anyone who has been hiking above timberline in the Western mountains has likely heard the loud, high-pitched call of the pika. Resembling a...

Storm Trains

Last evening, a cold front stretched from the Central Plains to southern Michigan, separating warm, humid air, to its south, from cooler and...

Geologic Basins

Novice geologists who visit a region such as the Permian Basin of West Texas might be surprised to find that the area does not resemble a br...