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Please update your bookmarks and check our new address regularily for the most recent postings about our graduate program, wildlife sightings, podcasts (coming late April, 2007), classes, bird of the day, visiting school groups, and much more from the amazing Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Big news is circulating since last Friday’s announcement that Jackson Hole is slowly becoming, well, less of a hole. A seventeen year study using global positioning system satellites to measure the slightest movement of the land found the valley rose 1.7 inches. I was concerned about becoming an alarmist, but this could have implications for the Teton Science Schools. What if the valley rose so high the Tetons completely disappeared? Should we be entering into strategic organizational planning to prepare for a loss-of-namesake contingency plan?
My rusty math skills quickly quieted my racing heart. All other rational geologic thought and processes aside, it would take 843,373.5 years for the valley floor to rise up and meet the highest of the teton peaks. It amazes me that the crust of the earth- something I know to be extremely hard and un-moving from personal experiences such as being reacquainted with it while skiing at Snowking or attempting to dig a hole in the cobble ridden sage flats- can be so incredibly plastic. There is a force at work here, though, that surpasses the strength of even the unruliest cowboys left in Jackson Hole, the Yellowstone Hotspot.
Unfortunately for the 20 somethings of the valley, this is not the latest National Park concessionaire run discotheque. This is a supervolcano that has carved a path all they way from Washington, Oregon, and California across Nevada and Idaho and eventually into the northwest corner of Wyoming. It now rests underneath the United States’ first National Park, Yellowstone, and provides us with such spectacles as Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic Springs, and ancient columnar basaltic flows.
After all my musings, I decided I better get outside and make sure all was still visibly right with the valley. I summitted Shadow Mountain, which lies just opposite the Teton Range on the Gros Ventre side of the valley, with Jaime and our cross-country skis. We surveyed the scene and decided that from 1,500 feet above the valley and 58,000 feet from the peak of the Grand it was hard to tell anything was happening. However, even though it is just out of sight in the picture below, the astute observer will realize when gazing at the Teton Range that it abruptly ends to the north and tapers to nothing. The range that once continued well beyond where you can see from here once succumbed to the Yellowstone Hotspot.
Jack Turner, author of Teewinot: A year in the Teton Range and Abstract Wild, spoke with the graduate students and faculty for an evening. Jack’s ideas were presented in the context of a book of his that is to be released this summer called Travels in the Greater Yellowstone. Jack’s new book highlights ecological issues in the greater yellowstone ecosystem by documenting various locations throughout the area that illustrate specific problems. For example, the Bear Tooth Plateau is an high alpine area that exists at 10,000 ft and is home to the American Pipit, Black Rosy-Finch, and pikas. The increases in temperature associated with human induced climate change may “push” these species out of this habitat. Jack contends it may be the new silent spring for the Bear Tooths.
Jack also spent a portion of the evening discussing what “wild” means to our society. Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park are often thought of as wild or wilderness. Jack believes they are not as wild as we may think. He posed questions such as, “How can we call something wilderness if we actively try to control it?” Poignant examples he used were the controversial wolf reintroduction and the newly proposed elk and bison herd culls.
His ideas have sparked interesting discussions around our community. The discussion has been timely because it corresponds to the “Ecological Inquiry” class currently happening. In this class, graduate students are exploring multiple perspectives on ecological issues in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Check back for some results of their inquiries.
Last night some folks saw 13 wolves on the buttes near Kelly, WY. Today a group of us went out to see what we could see. We found three wolves on top of a hill a long ways off. Later, we spotted a lone wolf on Antelope Flats. Here is a digiscoped image:
An eagle showed up too. We have been seeing them on the powerline poles consistently during the last month. Here is a drive by from Dale’s subaru:
Happy Valentines Day!
