USGS

There’s a movement in Flagstaff to change the name of a downtown street with a controversial moniker. City officials are considering several community proposals to rethink Agassiz St. It was named after Louis Agassiz, an influential 19th century biologist and Harvard professor. But his legacy is one of racism.

In autumn swarms of flying insects cloud the skies on the lower Colorado River near Bullhead City. Caddisflies are a nuisance to recreationists who want to boat, swim or fish on the river. So city officials have started an unprecedented experiment to get rid of them. They recently tweaked the operation of Davis Dam to lower the river’s level and try to kill off the bugs. But just three hundred miles upriver another first-of-its-kind experiment is happening at Glen Canyon Dam, with the goal of SAVING caddisflies, not killing them. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports on how the Southwest’s largest river ended up in a tug-of-war over a tiny bug.

Biocrust is a vital, but fragile material that covers a good portion of the soil surface on the Colorado Plateau. This “living skin” is a complex concoction of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, moss and lichen.

A new paper published today in Science shows a rising risk of water shortages in the Colorado River Basin. Scientists say diminishing snowpack from climate change plays a critical role—not just because snow supplies the river with water, but because it acts as a protective shield against evaporation. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke with lead author Chris Milly of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Melissa Sevigny: Your study was about what’s going to happen to the Colorado River as the world continues to get warmer. What did you find out?

A rapidly changing climate means there’s no longer a “typical” year on the Colorado Plateau. That’s confirmed by a long-term study of bugs in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico.