Water in the desert - The desert is no place to be without water - one of man's basic needs for survival. We think of deserts as areas of extreme heat and dryness. Deserts characteristically receive less than 10 inches of rainfall annually. In some deserts, the amount of evaporation is greater than the amount of rainfall.  More...

New Mexico's Space Triangle - If southern New Mexico has one thing in abundance, it's wide, open spaces. But the plains and mesas of the Chihuahua Desert also hide a kind of space that extends beyond the horizon, the kind that inspires visionary rocket scientists, secret government research, conspiracy theories... More...

Cliff Swallow- The Cliff Swallow is one of the most social - and more quarrelsome - of all our landbirds. During the breeding season, it lives in colonies that may have hundreds to thousands of pouch-shaped mud nests attached to stony surfaces. More...

Shutterbug 101: What's wrong with this picture? - Okay now, students. Put away your books and take out a nice sharp pencil. We are going to have a pop quiz! Well, maybe not really, but kind of.

We are going to use the lessons learned from our past few tutorials to dissect the above image. More...

Shutterbug 101: Rule of Thirds - Composition and how you frame an image determine the difference between a bad photo and a good one. Now, if you like your photos with heads cut off, big empty spaces around things and a little kid whose face is so small it’s hard to pick him out of the pumpkins he’s sitting in... More...

Traces of the Forgotten - A section of the Old Spanish Trail - The year was 1776. Santa Fe and southern Utah were merely provinces of Mexico. The land separating the two was so rugged, that a practical route between them was not established until 1829. This was the year that Santa Fe merchant Armando Armijo led an expedition consisting of 60 men and 100 mules, into Utah. More...

Get the latest Colorado River information - The rivers feeding Lake Powell are below average, but the lake starts to rise at this time of year. Lake levels are changing as the water flow down the Colorado river to Mexico through the dams and lakes. More...