F&M Department of Earth & Environment

https://www.npr.org//a-giant-organic-farm-faces-criticism- Soil health is critical to farming success. Managing soil in semi-arid environments can be tricky. Capitalizing farming can also have tremendous detrimental effects on the landscape. Read on for more details!

A layer cake of cliffs forms a feast for your eyes. The vivid colors of many of Grand Canyon's rock layers are due mainly to small amounts of various minerals,... most containing iron, which impart subtle shades of red, orange, yellow, or green to the canyon walls. #Geology #NationalPark #GrandCanyon #Arizona #EarthFocus #ImageDescription: Closeup of a Bright Angel shale ledge with crumbling layer upon layer of different mineralized colors: blue, green, yellow, pink, and red. NPS/Kristen M. Caldon.

https://www.ioes.ucla.edu//uclas-women-leaders-discuss-t/

From F&M alum Stephen J. Tyson, Jr. F&M Class of 2007 (aka Ellect) Happy Earth Day! https://youtu.be/Bd-E2HX5ofc

ONLY 380 MINUTES LEFT TO GIVE https://dayofgiving.fandm.edu/giving-day/36867

https://dayofgiving.fandm.edu/ #digdeep #allin4fandm

https://www.abc.net.au//walker-swamp-blue-gum-pl/13110128

https://www.npr.org//near-coasts-rising-seas-could-also-pu

https://www.ksjd.org//small-town-struggles-mine-over-clean

A Tule Raft Makes It Through The Grand Canyon. After studying Grand Canyon river running history for the last few decades, it occurred to me that I hadn’t paid ...enough attention to the First Nation mariners of the Colorado River. Indigenous peoples of the Colorado River were using boats on the river in 1540. They had thousands of years to boat the Colorado. Over the last few years I have focused on Tule Reed, schoenoplectus acutus, commonly called hardstem Tule or just common Tule. It’s a very buoyant plant native to the Colorado River basin. That study took on new meaning when I won a Grand Canyon river trip in the 2019 main lottery for late December, 2020. After contacting Grand Canyon National Park and the Bureau of Land management, this fall my wife Hazel and I harvested some Tule along the Colorado River near Blythe, California. We dried the 10-foot-long reeds in the sun for a few weeks and then with our friend Stacey, bundled them together using lots and lots of sixteenth of an inch diameter nylon cord. We affectionately called the craft Lotsaknots. Ours was a crude craft compared to what the First Nations peoples build from Peru to Northern California, but we figured we better start somewhere. The Tule raft joined a fleet of 5 eighteen-foot rubber rafts, one sixteen-foot rubber raft, a dory, two hard shell and one inflatable kayak for the thirty-day Grand Canyon run. Our launch date of December 30, 2020 soon approached. After inspecting all our river gear and providing our group with a river orientation, Ranger Peggy Kolar allowed us to launch Lotsaknots. It helped that the Tule raft floated and preformed well at the put in. My longtime friend Peter Brown, a dendrochronologist from Fort Collins who grew up on the Navajo Nation in Tuba City offered to row the Tule. Peter had never kayaked before, and he brought along a cheap $50 kayak paddle and a not-so-cheap dry suit and lifejacket. Peter was convinced the raft would make it. I gave it odds to Soap Creek. Lotsaknots kicked Pete off in the Paria, but he hung on to the raft and his paddle, scrambled right back on, and was paddling again in the tail waves. Since the Grand Canyon Old Timers called a run through a rapid a good run if one was able to paddle the tailwaves, Pete was optimistic. He swam a lot in the next 30 days, like when he spent too much time futzing with his Go-Pro and ended up running the far right side of Hance. We certainly didn't know what we were doing but every evening we pulled Lotsaknots out of the water and stood her on her stern, just like the native fisherman in Peru do to this day. We also put three wooden dowels through her, port to starboard, as traditional Tule raft builders do. One addition was a backrest out of the inflatable kayak. I was sure the raft wouldn’t make it, certain the rapids would destroy the raft and assumed it wouldn’t be long before Lotsaknots would be draped over the back of one of the rafts, next to one of the kayaks. That never happened. When we got to the Kaibab Suspension Bridge, I walked to Phantom Ranch, found a Ranger, and suggested they might want to go to Boat Beach. They did just that and Lotsaknots made it into the NPS daily briefing. Just below Phantom, Lotsaknots decided to take Peter into a wicked eddy on river right. The raft threw Pete off and for the first time, departed his company. I was running sweep in my dory and joined in. Peter is a smart guy. He swam to shore and patiently waited. When Lotsaknots came by, he jumped out and climbed aboard, then paddled out of the eddy, leaving me there spinning in circles. I caught up to them for the Horn Creek Rapid scout. They ran left. So did I. They ran right at Granite, down the meat for the big ride at Hermit, and took the right run at Crystal. By this time Peter had learned how to ride Lotsaknots like riding a bareback horse. It sure looked like they both were having a lot of fun. So much so that Fiona, the designated safety kayaker, was out of a job. While all this was going on, our trip was enjoying the cold winter weather, hiking at layovers, and making miles when on the water. Peter had no problems keeping Lotsaknots in the middle of the pack of boats as we rowed along on our twenty-plus mile days, something Charlie suggested might be difficult to do. I was also concerned that Beaver might like to eat the Tule, but they didn’t mess with Lotsaknots. On his right side run of Vulcan Rapid (Lava Falls), Pete was playfully removed from Lotsaknots by the "V-wave," but he was back on in the tailwaves above Lava Well. Day after day they carried on, through rain, freezing nighttime temps, pounding waves and rough rocks. Every few days I’d do a five-to-ten-minute interview with Peter. Those will be available online soon. Pete would try to convince me Lotsaknots was going to make it. I was still not so sure. When we got to Separation Rapid at river Mile 240, I knew Peter was right. The runout was uneventful and Peter Brown riding Lotsaknots cruised out of the Grand Canyon on January 27, 2021. Pete noted It was an intimate ride. Lotsaknots had started with a prow at Lees Ferry, but toward the middle of the trip the constant pounding by the rapids loosened the bindings and the prow fell flat. While this was the first documented Tule raft to float through Grand Canyon, Peter and I are confident that a traditionally built Tule raft made by the Mohave or Cocopah or other indigenous peoples could certainly have made a run through Grand Canyon in the last 10,000 years in much better boats than ours. We were simply following in their wakes. My thanks to Grand Canyon National Park, the Bureau of Land Management, Lotsaknots, and the amazing Crew of our 2020 Grand Canyon river trip. See more