For most of the year, snow covers Colorado’s highest peaks. Above about 11,000 feet, cold blustery winds can be relentless through the winter. But summer can transform these Alpine tundra environments ...

An ancient fossilized forest in Montana is reemerging 600 feet higher than the present-day tree line after spending the last 5,500 years encased in alpine tundra. But as temperatures continue to warm, ...

After years of escalating greenhouse gas emissions from melting permafrost in the Arctic, scientists have discovered a similar problem from a new source: Colorado’s Front Range. Defrosting alpine ...

We were pushing through head-high willows along a brushy caribou trail, five days into our week-long trek across Alaska’s Noatak valley, when my hiking partner, Brad Meiklejohn, startled me with a ...

You are able to gift 5 more articles this month. Anyone can access the link you share with no account required. Learn more. ORONO — About 13,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, glaciers that ...

Thawing permafrost in high-altitude mountain ecosystems may be a stealthy, underexplored contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, new University of Colorado Boulder research shows. The new ...

We all know what tree line is in Colorado: the point above which trees don’t grow. But what determines tree line: Cold? Soil conditions? Precipitation? And is tree line different in various parts of ...

Alpine plants, fragile and adapted to live in a limited ecosystem, may be the canary in the coal mine of climate change. Alpine plants face a number of threats: Recreation (trampling and disturbance ...

Will global warming cause northern forests to spread into arctic tundra? A study of black spruce suggests that the answer is complex and varies according to latitude and altitude. Global warming is ...