Latest Sierra Nevada Stories
California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montañez.The finding, which comes from analyzing stalagmites from Moaning Cavern in the central Sierra Nevada, was published online Nov. 5 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.The sometimes spectacular mineral formations in caves such as Moaning Cavern...
SANTA ANA, Calif., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Building Maintenance, the all-green janitorial division of Universal Services of America, is doing their part to protect the environment by sponsoring Yosemite National Park. The "Sponsor a Wild Place" program, put forth by Sierra Club, offers businesses the opportunity to help U.S. national parks in need of protection from environmental concerns. The funds from Universal Building Maintenance's sponsorship will help promote the use of...
The PBS documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea highlights various U.S. national parks as well as naturalist John Muir, the director says. Director Ken Burns said while making his six-part documentary about the country's national parks, he became enamored with the writings of Muir, who is credited as a pioneer in the preservation of the U.S. wilderness, the Bay Area News Group said Saturday. It's such a great thing to be hit over the head when you're working on a film, Burns...
BELLEVUE, Wash., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Expedia.com(R) and the National Park Foundation today announced the launch of a new online resource to help travelers plan and book vacations to America's National Parks. The site, found at www.expedia.com/nationalparks, provides visitors with information about the National Parks and nearby lodging options available on Expedia.com, as well as suggestions for long weekend itineraries and in-depth articles on "Can't-Miss National Parks." It also...
A California-based travel Web site has picked Yosemite National Park's Glacier Point as the No. 1 place for nighttime star gazing.VirtualTourist.com chose the California park's viewpoint, on the south wall of Yosemite Valley, as the best spot on the list of the Five Best Places to Count the Stars at Night for a view that VirtualTourist member Paulvir described as like someone had spilled a cup of milk in the sky.The Yesnaby area of Scotland's Orkney island was given second-place honors on the...
If the climate is not quite right, birds will up and move rather than stick around and sweat it out, according to a new study led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.The findings, to be published the week of Sept. 14 in an online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that 48 out of 53 bird species studied in California's Sierra Nevada mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the...
Experts say climate change appears to be a major cause of the disappearance of the oldest and largest trees within California's world famous Yosemite National Park, BBC News reported.An analysis of data collected over 60 years by forest ecologists has raised cause for concern over the majestic trees.Some fear that even more large trees may be dying off elsewhere, considering the current decline is happening within one of most protected forests within the US.Data collected on tree growth...
Study provides first evidence of connection between Rocky, Sierra Nevada Mountain populationsA wolverine first photographed by a remote-controlled camera on the Tahoe National Forest in February 2008 is most closely related to Rocky Mountain populations, according to a team of 10 federal, state and university scientists.Their findings are published in the latest edition of Northwest Science and focus on genetic analysis of hair collected from the first scientifically verified California...
Two newly published papers provide a deeper look at earthquake vulnerability for the Lake Tahoe regionFor more than a decade, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have been unraveling the history of fault ruptures below the cobalt blue waters of Lake Tahoe one earthquake at a time. Two new studies by the Scripps research team offer a more comprehensive analysis of earthquake activity in the Lake Tahoe region, which suggest a magnitude-7 earthquake occurs every...
REEDSPORT, Ore., April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- After a highly successful first year, the second season of Oregon boat rentals for water sports fun has begun at Loon Lake Watersports - http://www.loonlakerv.com/oregon-boat-jet-ski-rentals.html. "Demand was so strong last season that Loon Lake Watersports added another pontoon boat and jet ski rental," Jeff Schweiterman, the manager for Loon Lake Watersports, noted. "The boat rentals and jet ski rentals in Oregon were usually booked up every...
Latest Sierra Nevada Reference Libraries
Sequoia National Park is located in the United States in the southern area of the Sierra Nevada. The park contains 404,063 acres of protected land that was once inhabited by the Western Mono Native American tribe. The best evidence of Native American inhabitants are the pictographs found on Potwisha and Hospital Rock and bedrock mortars, tools that were sued to crush acorns. When European explorers and settlers entered the area, smallpox had already decimated the Native American...
Yosemite National Park is located in eastern California in the United States in the central area of Sierra Nevada, extending to the western slopes of the range. The park holds 761,268 acres of protected land. The area became very popular after Thomas Ayres, the artist who was responsible for much of the publicity of the area, and an entrepreneur named James Mason Hutchings visited in 1855. Early tourists that visited Yosemite before it was a national park could enjoy passing over the Wawona...
Kings Canyon National Park is located in southern Sierra, Nevada. The park encompasses an area that was once General Grant National Park, which was established in 1890, in order to preserve a grove of giant sequoia trees. The area was known to European settlers in the mid-nineteenth century, but was not well-known until 1873, after John Muir visited and found the environment to be similar to Yosemite valley. Harold Ickes, a United States Secretary of Interior, supported the idea of...
Fallon Nevada is located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain which has a huge impact in the type of weather in the region and is more of an arid type pattern. Temperatures for Fallon NV: December and January mark the coldest months in the area with average temps around 20-40F. February through March temps warm into the average of 30-50 increasing to 60 by March. April is a mild month with temps in the 40-60 range on average. May and June the average temps warm to 50-70...
The Northern Alligator Lizard, Elgaria coerulea, is a medium-sized lizard that lives in the North American west cost. It occurs along the Pacific Coast and in the Rocky Mountains from southern British Columbia through Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana south through Oregon until the coastal range and the Sierra Nevada in central California. These lizards can attain a length of about 10 inches long with nearly 4 inches of it being the snout. They have a distinct skin fold on...
