Networks are now used to describe all sorts of systems – social worlds, protein interactions, food webs, and so on. For example, here you see a litter of marmot pups, where a network could be used to describe relationships between each individual animal. These networks are useful because they allow us to identify interesting structures…

After a beautiful seven weeks, the time has come to leave the mountains and depart for more civilized and less magical parts of the world. So a short valedictory to my summer home, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Here is the lab’s home: the townsite of Gothic, once home to a small mining town. We…

My corner of Colorado is home to high peaks and deep glacial lakes – this montane and alpine zone hosts characteristic species like pines, firs, and a host of perennial herbs and shrubs like Erigeron spp.,  Potentilla sp. and Veratrum tenuipetalum. Here you can see several of these species near a wilderness lake at the…

Mountains can be precarious piles of rocks. In the Rockies, annual freeze-thaw cycles fracture solid rock into loose scree fields and talus slopes. The results are steep mountainsides like the one you see here on the back side of Treasury in western Colorado. Rocks on these slopes sit nearly at the angle of repose –…