Leslie Forero

On the evening of January 20, as long as skies are clear, Utahns should be able to see a super blood wolf moon, but what exactly does that mean? 

You would think that scientists would know how many species occur in an area, especially one as well-populated as Cache County. But scientists at Utah State University just discovered two new species of wildflowers that only occur near Logan – and they think more are out there.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Land Management took bids for oil and gas leases on 154,212 acres of public land. This move was criticized by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club for its potential to cause localized biodiversity loss. But how much can the loss of one or two species matter? 

Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique was recently named one of National Geographic's top travel destinations for the upcoming year, and there's a surprising connection between the African national park and Utah. 

My family hosted Japanese exchange students when I was in high school. As a result, I have a bunch of Japanese sisters, one of which is a mountaineer, gear-tester, and all-around outdoorswoman. She loves hot springs and wanted to know which natural hot springs in Utah were good to visit. So I set off to find out. 

In a basement below a cafeteria, researchers and scientists gather in what is the Intermountain Herbarium.  It is a little used Utah State University campus resource that serves an important purpose.

Torrey Gleave, a local photographer, was at Farmington Bay when he saw something odd.

In 2011, the Association for Women and Science published a paper claiming women were underrecognized when scientific organizations chose nominees and selected prominent scientists to award. 

One-hundred-and-fifty bright orange bikes have sprung up on the Utah State University campus in Logan. A coalition between USU’s Aggie Blue Bikes, the city of Logan, local bike shop Joyride and company Spin partnered to bring the bikeshares to USU on a provisional basis.

Professor Meghan Duffy, an expert in infectious diseases who recently lectured at Utah State University, was interested in how food webs in lakes are affected by pathogens, not drug discovery. She set up an experiment to see how water fleas – a small crustacean that are also important food for young fish – grow and reproduce under different diets with different pathogen exposures.

In the Jackson lab at Utah State University, mixers whirr, protein purification machines beep, and shakers jiggle, all with one goal: isolating and describing the bacterial immune systems known as CRISPR.

This is the ninth county health rankings report by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Each year the two organizations pool data from different sources to look at how where we live affects our health. 

Life’s good right now if you’re a juniper tree. The climate has been drier and warmer. Fire happens only once in a while. This has caused junipers and pinyon pines to start growing out into sagebrush steppe. But more pinyon and juniper cover means the sagebrush is being choked out, causing sage grouse to leave.

If you spend enough time poking around bushes in California, Nevada or Arizona, you’ll find stick insects, long little guys that blend in with sticks or leaves. Sometimes you only notice them when they drop out of their camouflaged environment and onto your shirt. They’re funny looking, harmless and at the center of a recent high-impact study at Utah State University describing when and how you can predict evolution.

For sagebrush lovers, fire is scary.  It destroys the native shrubs, grasses and wildflowers, leaving cheatgrass in its wake. Cheatgrass displaces native seedlings, destroys wildlife habitat, and increases the chances that fire will reoccur.  

If you see one, especially up close, you always remember it.  They have featherless orange-pink faces and their massive wings span nine feet.  Iconic and intimidating, there is no forgetting the critically endangered California Condor.

It’s easy to care about the wellbeing of the threatened giant panda because they’re cute.  But it’s hard to care about the critically endangered Chinese giant salamander, because they look like an enormous booger. 

House Bill 126 seeks to change where paroled inmates are housed. If passed, the number of offenders being sent to halfway houses in Utah would be capped depending on the population of the community. 

Cattle digest their food through bacteria-aided fermentation, creating methane as a byproduct that’s exhaled by the animal. According to research by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the cattle industry accounts for about 20 percent of total human-associated methane emissions.

In a recent survey at Utah State University, 99 percent of people described bees as either critical or important. The pollination services provided by bees are crucial for the survival of entire ecosystems. 

In the Namib Desert of southern Africa, strange circles dot the landscape as regularly as polka-dots on a dress. The bare spots are ringed by lush grass. These structures are known as fairy circles.  The fairy circles repeat for miles – and how they came to be is hotly debated. Scientists are divided regarding their origin:  animal or vegetable?

When plant ecologists are out for a walk, they see a puzzle. For almost 100 years, they’ve been trying to understand what governs the presence and abundance of a plant species in a community.