How far would you go to help someone get a glass of clean water? Zachary Dunn knows exactly how far he’d go: 9,000 miles. And that’s just one trip, one way. By summer’s end, Dunn and fellow Oregon State University students had traveled almost 36,000 miles — greater than the Earth’s circumference — to help bring drinkable water to Lela, a tiny farming community in Kenya.
Some people take a dim view of the idea that Oregon, as well as the rest of the world, could be expected to continue warming in coming decades. They may cite March snowfall in the Willamette Valley or unpublished comparisons of mean temperatures over a given time period in specific places. Appealing as it is, such evidence hardly constitutes proof that the region is cooling and does not trump rigorous, peer-reviewed science.
Stuart Harris can still remember the sights, scents and sounds of the autumn day when he gathered with his family as a boy and helped the adults smoke deer: crisp leaves, a dusting of frost and the laughter of children mingling with the smell of smoke in the air. For Harris, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), the preparation and flavor of smoked food have been familiar since childhood.
What we’ve come to understand in recent years is the scale of change and the pace of change that we’re now kicking off. We’re not going to be able to adapt past a certain point.
Chuang Xuan is at sea on the research vessel JOIDES Resolution studying magnetic and climate evidence in deep-sea sediment cores.
When Cristina Eisenberg and her family moved to Montana in 1994, they received a warm welcome from their neighbors. On the first night in their new log cabin, they were greeted by the sonorous howls of nearby wolves.