• GardenDesignOnline: New Landscape Architecture School (via GardenDesignOnline)

  • The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has recently launched a new program in landscape architecture, offering two separate degrees — a Bachelors Degree (a four-year program); or an Associates Degree (a two-year program).

    According to the university, landscape architecture is expected to be one of the top 50 professions in the next decade.

     

     

More information and inspiration on the Brine Garden page

A tale of two rare wild buckwheats (Eriogonum subgenus Eucycla (Polygonaceae)) from Southeastern Arizona Anderson, John L.

Penstemon lanceolatus Benth. or P. ramosus Crosswhite in Arizona and New Mexico, a peripheral or endemic species? Anderson, J. L.; Richmond-Williams, S.; Williams, O.

Further elucidation of the taxonomic relationships and geographic distribution of Escobaria sneedii var. sneedii, E. sneedii var. leei, and E. guadalupensis (Cactaceae) Baker, Marc A.

Determining the population boundaries of a narrowly endemic perennial plant, Lane Mountain milk-vetch, in San Bernardino County, California Charlton, David

Interagency Rare Plant Team inventory results – 1998 through 2003 Clark, Deborah J.; Tait, David A.

Dune communities of SE Colorado: Patterns of rarity, disjunction and succession Kelso, T.; Bower, N.; Halteman, P.; Tenney, K.; Weaver, S.

the advocacy group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking a court order to protect 681 Western species all at once, on the grounds that further delay would violate the law. Among the species cited are tiny snails, vibrant butterflies, and a wide assortment of plants and other creatures.

“It’s an urgent situation, and something has to be done,” said Nicole Rosmarino, the group’s conservation director. “This roadblock to listing under the Bush administration is criminal.”

By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 14 March 2008 09:08 am ET

Fewer flowers may grace the slopes of the Rocky Mountains as global warming’s earlier springtimes make blooms more vulnerable, a new study suggests.

David Inouye of the University of Maryland used data gathered in the Rockies from 1973 to the present to see how earlier spring thaws were affecting three flowers common to the mountain range.

An individual sunflower can live to be up to 75 years old, Inouye said, “but we find that these perennials are not producing enough seeds to make the next generation of plants.”

“What will replace these colorful flowers? We don’t know,” Inouye said. “But we know that many animals depend upon them, and so the outcome could be quite dramatic.”

March 6, 2008

More than 300,000 gallons (more than a million liters) of water per second were released from Lake Powell above the dam near the Arizona-Utah border.

That’s enough water to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes, said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

“This gives you a glimpse of what nature has been doing for millions of years, cutting through and creating this magnificent canyon,” Kempthorne said after he pulled the lever Wednesday, releasing the water from Glen Canyon Dam, upstream from Grand Canyon National Park.

The water level in the Grand Canyon rose 15 feet (4.6 meters) in some places.

Officials hope water from the three-day, controlled flood will leave behind sediment and restore sandbars as it goes back to normal levels.

Officials have flooded the canyon twice before, in 1996 and 2004.

Before the dam was built in 1963, the river was warm and muddy, and natural flooding built up sandbars that are essential to native plant and fish species. The river is now cool and clear, its sediment blocked by the dam.

The change helped speed the extinction of four fish species and push two others, including the endangered humpback chub, near the edge.

Shrinking beaches have led to the loss of half the camping sites in the canyon in the past decade.

Ranches and other private lands are important in maintaining the biodiversity of America’s West, suggests a new study.
( LARGE GARDENS and gentlemen’s farms play a similar role in the East.)

Ranching, which involves raising livestock that graze, requires large swaths of land and alters native vegetation in modest ways

Ranching, which involves raising livestock that graze, requires > large swaths of land and alters native vegetation in modest ways >, said study author Richard Knight, of Colorado State University. >

said study author Richard Knight, of Colorado State University.

said > >

Ranching as a land use supports species of conservation concern and interest more than virtually any other land use in the American West

Unlike land used for development, for instance, ranching keeps intact the native plant community of grasses and other plants

it supports very low human densities and large tracts of mostly un-fragmented landscapes.

Private lands are the most biologically productive lands in the American west, ” Knight said.

said s >

Excerpts:

I had only viewed the unmistakable rock tower of Baboquivari from the north and west–

the most sacred place for the Tohono O’odham tribe: Baboquivari, the center of the O’odham universe.

We passed the fork to Jaguar Canyon and kept going to a grove of Emory and Mexican Blue Oaks.

It was strange to see Ocotillos and a few Saguaros growing right above Arizona sycamores in this place where desert, water, and oaks converge.

As great as the flora was, it was rivaled by the butterflies. Pipevine swallowtails and sulfurs swarmed at every water crossing.

I felt privileged indeed, to stand in this last high oasis above the desert world