Science Moab

Not everyone looks at the night sky in the same way. Science Moab talks with Autumn Gillard, the Cultural Resource Manager for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, who shares her passion for the night sky influenced by her grandmother's teachings. We discuss the importance of the night sky in Southern Paiute culture, including its influence on traditional stories, dances, agricultural methods, and ecological knowledge. The conversation touches on the cultural differences in interpreting celestial bodies among various tribes and Western astronomy and the significance of winter storytelling. Autumn emphasizes preserving and passing down this knowledge through storytelling, mentorship programs, and community outreach events, and advocates for recognizing the scientific contributions of Indigenous people.

This show is part of a series exploring Science Moab’s School to Science Program, connecting students with scientists in the field, the lab, and beyond. This program began in 2021 and to date has mentored over 57 local students. In this episode, we talk with mentor Sarah Karinen, botanist and lead technician for the Northern Colorado Plateau Network of the National Park Service, and Maya and Ari Jacobs, juniors at Grand County High School. Sarah has sponsored several day long job shadows with local students facilitated by Science Moab. Maya and Ari spent a day with Sarah in the field at one of the NPS pinyon juniper long term test plots in Island in the Sky. They helped measure trees, learned a lot of different plant names, and talked about ecology out in nature.

The town of Moab exists because of the freshwater creeks that come off the La Sal Mountains into the alluvial fan the town was built on. We talk with Kara Dohrenwend about the science and efforts behind revitalizing creek corridors in Moab, including the history, current challenges, and strategic restoration plans for Moab's creeks. A key part of the restoration includes the removal of invasive species like Russian olive and tamarisk, which are replaced with native vegetation to mitigate fire hazards and improve ecological health. These projects also aim to manage flooding in Mill and Pack Creeks by stabilizing creek banks and facilitating better flood control.

Ray Mesa, near the La Sal mountains on the Colorado-Utah border is notable for its old-growth Ponderosa pines (estimated to be several hundred years old) that are growing in cool drainages amongst pinyon-juniper woodlands. Recent Ponderosa tree mortality raised concerns among land managers and Larissa Yocom, a fire ecologist at Utah State University, began exploring the potential causes of these deaths. These include drought, insect attacks, and increased competition due to fire suppression over the last 140 years. This research underscores the challenges of ecosystem management, particularly under changing climates, and highlights the unique importance of these rare old Ponderosa stands.

The Bears Ears Digital Cultural Heritage Initiative is a group of anthropologists, archaeologists, and indigenous communities collaborating to create virtual reality experiences and photogrammetric models of significant sites in the Bears Ears National Monument. We talk with Eric Heller, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, Noah Pleshet, assistant professor of anthropology at the university of New Brunswick, and Ben Bellorado, assistant curator at the Arizona State Museum about their methods and the importance of involving descendant communities in the interpretation and preservation of these sacred sites. We talk about the educational and preservation goals of the initiative, the involvement of indigenous students and community members, and the future potential for expanding this technology-driven approach to cultural heritage.

Plants and insects are the key members of food webs because they are not only abundant and diverse, but they also provide food for many other animals higher up the food chain. We talk with Moria Robinson, Assistant Professor of Biology at Utah State University, about variations in these food webs as climate in the western U.S. dries and warms. In particular, we look at the interactions of rabbit brush and caterpillars.

Utah is home to over 800 rock glaciers. These masses of ice covered with rock debris are key to perennial streams and alpine biodiversity, but they are poorly understood. We talk with Scott Hotaling, Assistant Professor in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University, who is studying the rare stonefly in order to gain understanding of how alpine streams are faring as glaciers recede under a warming and drying climate.

Sunset Crater, the most recent cinder cone in the San Francisco Volcanic Field, is estimated to have erupted between A.D. 1085 and 1090. In areas where the resulting lava flows were greater than 30cm thick, people may have been forced to migrate, leaving behind long-established homesteads and agricultural fields. On the positive side, lower elevation areas with cinder fall in the range of 3-10 cm would have become more suitable for farming, due to the beneficial effects of the cinder mulch. We talk with Volcanologist Michael Ort, who, together with a team of scientists, has unraveled the timing of these events and the implications of volcanic activity for humans at the time.

This show is part of a series exploring Science Moab’s School to Science Program, connecting students with scientists in the field, the lab, and beyond. This program began in 2021 and to date has mentored over 57 local students. In this episode, we talk with mentor Mary Langworthy, Public Programs Manager at the Moab Museum, and Klayre Humphreys, junior at Grand County High School. Mary has sponsored several day long job shadows with local students facilitated by Science Moab. Klayre spent a day at the museum with Mary in the spring of 2024 and ended up delving into the world of shark teeth which ultimately helped Moab Museum staff update and enhance their exhibit.

As photosynthesis happens, trees take in carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the form of sugars or carbohydrates. These sugars can be stored for many years in trees as a sort of “memory” and used to support their growth and metabolism during times of stress, like a drought. We talk with Drew Peltier, ecophysiologist and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Drew’s interests and research center on understanding how climate influences tree growth in our changing environment.

From the perspective of an archaeologist, the physical body of an ancient person is a gift because a body is a time capsule of the past. They lived in that space and that time, and their bodies are manifestations of what was there. We talk with archaeologist Erin Baxter, teacher and Curator of Anthropology at Denver Museum of Nature and Science, about her work unraveling the ancient southwest culture and her fascination with the archaeology of death.

The Little Colorado River (LCR) is a culturally and spiritually significant drainage for many people in the southwest. The LCR also provides sediment load to the main stem of the Colorado River for the production of sandbars downstream AND it is an important spawning ground for and home to the largest population of Humpback Chub. We talk with Phoebe Brown, river guide and researcher, about her studies that involve understanding the interactions of phosphorus and the growth rates of the Humpback Chub.

Rangelands are vast, natural grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that support grazing and browsing mammals and they are primarily natural ecosystems with native vegetation.These rangelands can become degraded by fire or improper grazing. We talk with Kari Veblen, professor of Rangeland Ecology at Utah State University about her research that focuses on the ecology and management of rangelands. Her research emphasizes multi-use landscapes, public and private, that are managed simultaneously for wildlife conservation and sustainable livestock production. The ultimate goal of her work is to inform sustainable management of rangeland ecosystems.

It is well known at this point that humans are using more water out of the Colorado River, then the river can support…for humans as well as other life forms that live along and within the river. Agriculture is using approximately 80% of that water. We talk with Aaron Derwingson, Water Projects Director of the Colorado River Program for the Nature Conservancy. Aaron and his team do freshwater conservation restoration projects across the whole Colorado River Basin, involving a combination of work from science and policy to direct project work on the grounds. By working to build relationships with the agricultural community, the team hopes to help ensure that there are sufficient water supplies for both people and nature.

Sagebrush once stretched across almost 500,000 square miles from the Dakotas to California. Each year, a million acres is lost to invasive species, catastrophic wildfire, development, improper grazing and climate change. Matt Cahill is the director of the Sagebrush Sea program for The Nature Conservancy. Matt advocates that scientific solutions and large-scale collaboration are needed to reverse the trend in sagebrush. We talk with Matt about what is being done to save this vital landscape.

For the past three years, the Nature Conservancy has hosted a small cohort of Indigenous college students at their Canyonlands Research Center in southeast Utah. The program, known as N.A.T.U.R.E. (Native American Tribes Upholding Restoration & Education), seeks to empower the next generation of science and conservation leaders on the Colorado Plateau. During those seven weeks, students work with Indigenous knowledge holders and scientists, Western scientists, and program mentors to learn and teach about the science, conservation, and knowledge of the region’s landscape and conduct their own original capstone research projects. In this episode, Science Moab talks with two students from the 2023 N.A.T.U.R.E. cohort, James Johanntoberns (Kiowa/Caddo/Pawnee) and Shundeen Smith (Diné). We talk about their experiences in the program and their capstone research projects focused on ant-biocrust interactions and the legacy of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation.

Can the simple beauty of an organism be enough to want to restore and preserve it? If so, Aspen would be at the top of that list. So much more than a beautiful tree, a stand or group of aspen trees is considered a singular organism with the main life force underground in the extensive root system. We talk with Paul Rogers, professor and Director of the Western Aspen Alliance, about the threats to Aspen today across the west and the Colorado Plateau. In the face of increasing drought and fire across the Colorado Plateau, this resilient tree finds itself most susceptible to the vast numbers of animals that forage on its young and nutritious shoots.

Ever wonder how those amazing dinosaur bones make it from being embedded in rock to a museum where they are flawlessly displayed within a complete skeleton? Natalie Toth knows. Natalie is the Chief Preparator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and her job begins with a chainsaw in the field and ends with a fully prepared fossil display. We talk about the chain of events that must occur for this to be completed and about the backbone of this process which is building a world class Earth Sciences collection for researchers around the world to use.

Cirsium scopulorum, or mountain thistle, was long thought to be the only species of thistle occurring in the alpine tundra. Molecular, morphological, and geographical evidence now support the recognition of many species of thistles in the alpine tundra of the southern Rocky Mountains. We talk with Jennifer Ackerfield, the head curator of natural history collections, and the associate director of biodiversity research at Denver Botanic Gardens about her quest to delineate the many varieties of thistles across the alpine of the intermountain west, including a unique species right here in the La Sal Mountains of SE Utah.

Increased visitation and recreation in the desert inevitably leads to more human-generated noise. We talk with Joel Berger, University Chair in Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University, about how this noise may or may not be affecting the iconic desert bighorn sheep. More specifically, we discuss how the noise may lead to increased prenatal stress on the females. The female bighorn typically give birth in the late Spring, which is when recreation in the SW desert is at its peak.