I want to share a few images that recently were selected by the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment. This year’s challenge was ‘People in Action, in the Environment’. The first image is taken at The Nature Conservancy’s Mexican Cut preserve. The site is a glacial cirque at more than 12000′ elevation. While working…

I want to share a story about how a new idea can originate in a chance hallway conversation. The story is about ecological niches. When you think about a niche, you might imagine something like you see here in the city of Samarkand: the Mirza-Uluk-Bek in the Registan (one of the first color photographs). The…

You might wonder what we scientists are spending your tax money on, and how our work makes a difference. Federal grants from the National Science Foundation specifically require that we, the grant-holders, justify the value of the work in this way. We are evaluated not only on the intellectual merit of our work, but also…

So much changes with a little water. On a recent trip to Death Valley, a fragment of Eliot’s The Waste Land came to mind: Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there…