Carbon Capture
Wyoming could lead the world toward a cleaner energy future
By Emilene Ostlind
This December, five international research teams will converge at the outskirts of Gillette, Wyoming, to compete for a $7.5 million Carbon XPRIZE.
Energy in the West
Over the last quarter century, the western states’ energy portfolio has shifted. Coal used to produce far and away the largest share of electricity, but recent advances in hydraulic fracturing and demand for low-carbon fuel have bumped natural gas to first place.
Scenarios Planning
An oil major considers possible futures to prepare for a changing world
Royal Dutch Shell’s primary business is the discovery, extraction, refinement, transportation, marketing, and selling of oil.
The Clean Power Plan
When Congress failed to enact legislation to address climate change, President Obama vowed to take action himself. “No challenge poses a greater threat to our children, our planet, and future generations,” he said.
The Landowner Must Yield
A 100-year-old homestead act gives energy developers access to private lands
Just south of where the Little Snake River meanders along the Colorado-Wyoming border, silvery green sagebrush and mountain scrub grow above a fortune of hydrocarbons.
The Big Picture
New research explores how critters fare in the oil and gas fields
Over the last 15 years, drilling has intensified in formerly remote wildlife habitats across the West.
Farming Sagebrush
Can fertilizer grow more deer on public lands?
Imagine the old green fertilizer spreader you haul out every spring to urge your tired lawn back to greenness, but much bigger and suspended from the bottom of a helicopter.
Life Among the Turbines
Researcher explores how grassland birds respond to wind farms
On the eastern Wyoming plains, the wind whips hard across tough little bunch grasses
Sage grouse shape development patterns in Wyoming
This fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether the greater sage grouse merits endangered species protection, and Wyoming is holding its breath.
Wyoming Conservation Exchange
New Marketplace Will Reward Wyoming Ranchers for Conserving Sage Grouse Habitat
The Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, at the headwaters of the Colorado River, is laced with clear running streams and fosters abundant habitat and some of the most robust greater sage grouse, mule deer, and pronghorn populations in the world.
Sagebrush Recovers at Oil and Gas Wells
Other Species Do Not
“The most important questions have to do with the long-term behavior of systems,” says Indy Burke, University of Wyoming ecologist. The system she’s talking about, in this case, is western landscapes.
Federal government fast tracks a Wyoming wind farm
Carbon County’s Chokecherry-Sierra Madre project will be the nation’s largest
Solutions: Collaborative problem solving in the gas fields
A diverse team knuckles down on a daunting natural resource issue