As its name suggests, the bigleaf maple tree's massive leaves are perhaps its most distinctive quality. A native to the Pacific Northwest's wet westside forests, these towering trees can grow leaves up to 1.5 feet across—the ...
Over two days in the summer of 1910, wildfires roared across the bone-dry forests of the inland Northwestern U.S., the Rockies, and parts of British Columbia. Whole towns burned. The blazes scorched 3 million acres of forest, ...
Andy Farquhar's plans for an outdoor adventure have gone up in smoke twice this summer.
The Appalachian Trail, North America's most famous hiking route, stretches over 2,189 mountainous miles (3,520 kilometers) from Georgia to Maine. In any given year, some 3 million people hike on it, including more than 3,000 ...
Rusted pipes litter the sandy fields of Ashley Williams Watt's cattle ranch in windswept West Texas. The corroded skeletons are all that remain of hundreds of abandoned oil wells that were drilled long before her family owned ...
The return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 popularized the idea of reintroducing long-lost species to modern habitats. While scientists are still trying to fully understand the ecological consequences, the ...
A new study shows that it is possible to use mechanical force to deliberately alter chemical reactions and increase chemical selectivity—a grand challenge of the field.
Tasmanian devil populations have been devastated over the past 25 years due to devil facial tumor disease, an infectious cancer. But the Tasmanian government does not support relocating uninfected wild devil populations to ...
In glaciers, well above sea level, algae thrive. Normally invisible to the naked eye, they are often spotted by hikers trekking through the mountains in late spring as strikingly colored stretches of snow, in shades of ochre, ...
The next time you go for a hike, take an extra moment to appreciate the seemingly ordinary life all around you. A house fly, humble yarrow weed and other "generalist" plants and pollinators play a crucial role in maintaining ...
