On a sunny April day at the tail end of last winter, Jeff Deems, a researcher at the Boulder-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, and Nathan Elder, the water supply manager for Denver Water, used snowshoes to reach a point high above the Blue River in Summit County. There they dug a pit, which […]
Rocky Mountains
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors, Technology
We know the earth is warming. We know that will stress water in the West. But we don’t know how.
Flavio Lehner was a graduate student working with computer models simulating Earth’s climate at the University of Berne in Switzerland when he had a chance to join a research vessel collecting sea temperatures and measuring ocean currents between Greenland and Svalbard, Norway. “As a lifestyle, field work is very agreeable,” Lehner said. “But for me, […]
Posted inColoradans, Environment, News, Outdoors
A fungus threatens survival of the only toads that live high in the Rocky Mountains
BUENA VISTA — Tim Korpita is wearing blue rubber gloves and thigh-high waders, but when someone shouts “Toad!” he lunges like a ninja. He takes a giant step over the marsh grasses and is on his stomach at the edge of a slow-moving creek, clutching a tiny, speckled boreal toad between his thumb and index […]