Diane Hope

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

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

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.

Every spring, three species of nectar-feeding bats travel several hundred miles from Mexico into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to reach maternity roosts where they rear their young.

In the summer of 2023, what seemed like tiny aliens turned up at the Wupatki National Monument. A visitor told park staff that tadpoles were wriggling about in a pool of standing water that had flooded the Ancestral Puebloan ballcourt.

Fewer than 2% of North America’s bark beetle species attack trees, but those that do have killed billions of conifers across the West over the last 30 years.

Waking on winter solstice to a hushed world of bright light, we look outside and see fresh-fallen snow.

Each spring and fall, migrating birds take on journeys that put Olympic athletes in the shade. For example, a Western Tanager weighing-in at around an ounce may fly from Western Canada to Central America.

Visitors awed by the size and beauty of the Grand Canyon often comment on how beautiful its night skies are, too. Many visitors get their first-ever sight of the Milky Way there – and night sky programs are the most popular run by the National Park Service, with attendance around five times higher than for geology presentations.

Southwest of Camp Verde along Salt Mine Road are some low, bright white mounds — evidence of rock salt deposits, found in bands up to 60 feet thick in the Verde Formation.