Earth Notes

There were no fire lookout towers in the Arizona of the early 1900s. Instead, early firefighters found tall ponderosa pines near mountain tops or other strategic viewpoints.

The Four Corners potato fed people 10,000 years ago and now the ancient, nutrient-packed spud is drawing new interest.

The sandstone pinnacles, arches and natural bridges of the Colorado Plateau may seem like static, silent parts of the landscape. But researchers at the University of Utah have tuned in to a very different reality.

No one expects to see trees that look like jewels in the high desert of Arizona. But that’s exactly what visitors find in the Petrified Forest National Park – ancient logs preserved for millennia by a process that transfigured them into rare and beautiful stones.

The mighty saguaro cactus is both a cultural and ecological icon.

If you find a bird feather – how can you tell which species it belongs to? An ornithologist in the Forensic Laboratory at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pondered this question.

The American pika is a small mammal that inhabits the highest elevations in the western mountains. Members of the rabbit family, pikas are approximately 7 inches long, characterized by outsized ears, short legs and a chunky, furry body.

CO₂ levels topped a record high of 430 ppm in May. It’s bad news for ecosystems, but could mean wetter summers for some regions.

Rain comes when water molecules in the atmosphere clump together to form ice crystals or water droplets that are heavy enough to fall to the ground. But what causes that clumping to happen?

Monsoon season is underway. Meteorologists have identified a pattern that brings hope to those longing for a lush summer this year.

The Las Vegas bearpoppy is incredibly rare and found in scattered locations in northwestern Arizona and near Las Vegas.

Wet meadows are small but crucial landscape elements among the pines above the Mogollon Rim. They benefit plant diversity, wildlife and watershed health.

Across the vast landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, one resilient plant has profoundly shaped people and land for many centuries: Indian ricegrass.

Loggers worked nonstop during the Great Depression. One of the longest-standing logging communities was a place called Apex along the Grand Canyon Railway, north of Williams and near the Canyon’s South Rim.

A cactus no bigger than a paperclip grows across the rocky eastern slopes of the Kaibab Plateau. Its thin, long spines protrude from its rotund body like a plump hedgehog.

The Suckley’s cuckoo bumble bee has a unique life cycle. Like cuckoo birds, they lay their eggs in the nests of other species instead of rearing their own young.

Monarch Butterflies fly thousands of miles every year between their southern overwintering grounds as far north as Canada and back.

The vast Great Basin stretches west from the Colorado Plateau across much of Utah and Nevada. The region is so named because bodies of water drain inland with no outlet to the sea.

It’s International Dark Sky Week, a worldwide celebration that was started in 2003 to raise awareness about light pollution. This year is the first time it’s come to Flagstaff.

Pueblo Grande de Nevada — known as the "Lost City" — is an archeological site near Overton, Nevada. It’s a complex of villages inhabited by the Ancestral Puebloans for nearly a thousand years.

Artificial Intelligence is being applied to many areas of life, including forestry on the Colorado Plateau. A team at NAU is using AI models in conjunction with Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology.