Tag: USGS

ASPEN -- Public policy and political will must shift as dramatically as the winds that have whipped Colorado’s record wildfires, experts say, or the state’s residents will continue to pay a higher and higher price for forests that are dying due to global climate change.

A U.S. Geological Survey scientist Friday said large earthquakes in unusual places like Virginia and southern Colorado earlier this week aren’t typically associated with the controversial natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing.

There’s more bad news for water watchers in the Rocky Mountain West, where record snowpack from last winter has led to a dangerous runoff in some places, including Colorado’s Western Slope. The bad news is this season is apparently a statistical blip in a 30-year historical decline in Rocky Mountain snowpack, which provide between 60 and 80 percent of the water supply for the 70 million people living in the western United States.