Grappling with the Drying Riverbeds of the Agua Fria
As the once flowing Agua Fria river runs dry, Rachel Howard discusses how Arizona communities are living with climate change.
Tagged: American West
Badwater (a Kinship Series Essay)
Daegan Miller recounts his close encounter with a buffalo herd and the fraught political history of the Badlands in this essay with audio narration excerpted from Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, a five-volume book series.
Seeing Beyond the Joshua Trees in the East Mojave
Tracing the ecological history of the Mojave National Preserve, Julia Sizek questions what was really lost in the Cima Dome Fire that killed swathes of Joshua trees.
John Wesley Powell’s Settler-Colonial Vision for the West
John Wesley Powell is celebrated for his proposed land use reforms in the American West. But his vision did not include Indigenous peoples.
The WWII Incarceration of Japanese Americans Is an Environmental Story
The environmental conditions of Japanese American incarceration camps in World War II were pivotal to the way detainees navigated their experience. But these histories are as diverse as their landscapes.
The Potential for Peril Built into San Francisco
An environmental history of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake weaves together urban planning, plate tectonics, Progressive-Era reform, and soil dynamics.
A History Buried at Wounded Knee: A Conversation with Louis Warren
A new history of the Ghost Dance shows Native Americans preparing to live within industrial capitalism and impoverished landscapes without succumbing to assimilation.
Loaves and Fishes at Standing Rock
A senior scholar of North American indigenous history visits the Oceti Sakowin camp and finds cause for hope. Up to a point.
Biosphere 2: Why an Eccentric Ecological Experiment Still Matters 25 Years Later
Four scholars and one of the original “biospherians” offer their takes on perhaps the largest private science experiment in history.
