The Arizona Game and Fish Department has begun dropping fake plants and other habitat into Roosevelt Lake. Widely varying lake levels at Roosevelt pose problems for natural vegetation.
The work is part of a larger plan, the Tonto National Forest Lakes Habitat Improvement Project, which seeks to help bass and crappie bounce back and boost the sustainability — and fishing prospects — of Salt River reservoirs and Bartlett Lake.
As Congress eases rules for selling public lands and considers measures to weaken the Endangered Species Act, conservation efforts may rely increasingly on private facilities like the Phoenix Zoo, which supports its Arthur L. and Elaine V. Johnson Foundation Native Species Conservation Center with a portion of its gate receipts.
A sacred site built in southwest Colorado around 800 years ago hints that the ancestral Pueblo people might have used geometry.
The analysis of the Sun Temple at Mesa Verde National Park offers the first hard evidence that a prehistoric North American society possibly employed such figures in construction.
Photo courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The risk of a severe, multi-decade drought hitting the Southwest United States by the end of the century could reach as high as 99 percent if greenhouse gas emissions continue along current lines, says a paper by a team of scientists from Cornell University, Columbia University and NASA.
Smoke from Arizona’s Wallow Fire lends color to an Albuquerque, NM sunset. Photo by John Fowler.
Human-induced climate change has doubled forest fire damage in the West over the past 30 years, says a study published online early by the journal PNAS. But human effects on fire extend far beyond climate.
