NERN – Mountain West
Restoring Watersheds, and Hope, After New Mexico’s Record-Breaking Wildfires
GALLINAS, N.M.—On a warm August day, a small crew arranged charred logs and rocks into a structure to slow flooding below a dammed pond in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo mountains. Just three months earlier the state’s largest-ever wildfire raged through here, burning over 340,000 acres and leaving behind thick ash, charred debris and unstable, […]
Read MoreThe ‘Power of Aridity’ is Bringing a Colorado River Dam to its Knees
Deep in the bowels of the Glen Canyon Dam, an awful lot stays the same. Under the mass of concrete it’s pleasantly cool all year long, even when the Arizona sun beats down above. As the decades march on, the machinery inside remains unchanged, too. The dam’s innards are a time capsule of 1960s engineering. […]
Read MoreCarbon Removal Is Coming to Fossil Fuel Country. Can It Bring Jobs and Climate Action?
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo.—In early fall, residents of this desolate corner of southwestern Wyoming opened their mailboxes to find a glossy flyer. On the front, a truck barreled down a four-lane desert highway with a solar farm on one side and what looked like rows of shipping containers on the other. On the back was an […]
Read MoreCorn Nourishes the Hopi Identity, but Climate-Driven Drought Is Stressing the Tribe’s Foods and Traditions
Corn goes back to their very creation story. As the Hopi people emerged into this world, the Creator gave them three things: a gourd of water, a planting stick and a short ear of blue corn. “And he told us one specific thing,” says Clark Tenakhongva, a 65-year-old Hopi farmer and former vice chairman of […]
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