Southwest Flooding

Tropical moisture, swept into the Desert Southwest by Tropical Depression Ivo (now off the Baja Peninsula), has been caught in the Southwest...

Lake Lahontan

During the Wisconsin Glaciation, the last glacial period of the Pleistocene Epoch, a large lake covered most of northwest Nevada, extending ...

Cambrian Rock Exposures

Unlike strata from the other Paleozoic Periods, Cambrian rock exposures are relatively rare throughout the United States.  Deposited from 54...

Sage Grouse Saga

Greater sage grouse, the largest grouse in North America, inhabit sage grasslands of the Intermountain West, from Colorado to the Columbia P...

Long-Billed Curlews

While crossing the stormy Plains yesterday afternoon, I encountered a small flock of long-billed curlews, attempting to fly into the teeth o...

The Western Ibis

Cousin to the glossy ibis of the Southeastern U.S., the white-faced ibis winters along the Gulf Coast (from Louisiana to Texas), in valley w...

Mono Lake

Mono Lake is a 70 square-mile saline lake at the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada Range, approximately 13 miles east of Yosemite National P...

Harney Basin

Harney Basin is a geologic and topographic basin in southeast Oregon; while it sits adjacent to the northwest corner of the Great Basin, it ...

The Great Basin

Defined by its hydrology, the Great Basin is a large area of the American West within which the rivers and streams drain from an irregular r...

The Owens Valley

The Owens River of southeast California rises along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at the southeast edge of Yosemite Nati...

The Elusive Ringtail

The ringtail, named for its bushy, banded tail, is a small, nocturnal omnivore of the western U.S. and northern Mexico. Extremely agile, th...

Utah's Powder Keg

Famous for deep powder that attracts skiers from across the globe, the Wasatch Front of Utah is about to unleash its bounty on those who liv...

Great Basin National Park

Just west of the Utah line, U.S. 50 crosses the Snake Range of east-central Nevada, among the highest mountain ranges in the Great Basin; in...

Reno's Quakes

Fifteen million years ago, during the Miocene Period, an uplift of the Intermountain West began. This geologic process continued into the P...

High, Dry and Fractured

The Great Basin of western North America stretches from the crest of the Sierra Nevada to the summit of the Wasatch Plateau and from souther...

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...