Author Archive

The Ambitious Restoration of An Undammed Western River

Yale Environment 360: Along the Elwha River on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, the largest dam removal project in the world is nearing completion. The scale of the undertaking is on display as a National Park Service employee unlocks a fence guarding a colossal construction crane looming over what is left of the Glines Canyon Dam, which once rose 210 feet above the river. A narrow, vertiginous walkway, which will eventually serve as a visitors’ viewpoint, ends in mid-air above a yawning 150-foot-wide chasm cut in...

Megadrought in US Southwest: A bad omen for forests globally

Yale Environment 360: As brutal fires torch tinder-dry dense forests and neighboring homes in the American West, researchers are examining the relationships between drought, wildfire, and a warming climate, predicting mass forest die-offs and prolonged megadrought for the Southwest. These forces are accelerating, they say, and already transforming the landscape. Unchecked, they may permanently destroy forests in the southwestern U.S. and in some other regions around the world. Across the West, “megafires” have become...