High Country News

The collected Sierra Nevada

Meteorologist Hal Klieforth has collected a lifetime of knowledge – and a museum’s worth of artifacts – from years spent exploring the Sierra Nevada.

by Terray Sylvester , Apr 28, 2009
Between the grims and the grins

We will need humility as well as technology to triumph over climate change.

by Allen Best, Mar 30, 2010
INNOVATE, Part I

Westerners have a knack for new and innovative thinking, as this special issue of HCN shows.

by Ray Ring, Tom Beal, Emily Underwood, Terray Sylvester, Sarah Gilman, Mar 09, 2009
Madame Merian and her passion for metamorphosis

In Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd uncovers the life and legacy of a pioneering 17th century woman

by Michelle Nijhuis, Jan 21, 2008
Shifting sands in Navajoland

On the drought-stricken Navajo Nation, scientist Margaret Hiza Redsteer studies the movement of sand dunes.

by Michelle Nijhuis, Jun 23, 2008
Bridging American Indian students' scientific achievement gap

Educator Michael Ceballos breaks down the barriers keeping young Native Americans from careers in science.

by Erica Gies, May 11, 2011
What should we do with our blink of time?

Natural history teaches us how rapidly and irrevocably the world can change -- a fact we should bear in mind as we enter the new, human-dominated era some scientists call the Anthropocene.

by Stephen Trimble, May 31, 2012
A scientist's view of change

In Of Rock and Rivers, Ellen Wohl, a geomorphologist, reads the story behind the Western landscape.

by Valerie Rapp, Nov 22, 2009
Waiting for Rain

The hurricanes in the Gulf and New Mexico’s endless drought lead the author to wonder why it is human beings refuse to take nature seriously

by Laura Paskus, Feb 20, 2006
Save Our Snow

Faced with rising temperatures and a passive federal government, Western towns such as Aspen, Colo., are beginning to work out a local approach to combating global warming

by Michelle Nijhuis, Mar 06, 2006