Athlete vs. heat - from The Washington Post

LOVELL CANYON, Nev. — It was 73 degrees and the early-morning sun was still rising over the Mojave Desert as nearly six dozen long-distance runners gathered at the start line and anxiously watched numbers tick down on the digital clock overhead.

Julie Bertoia, a 50-kilometer runner, descends into
 the lower part of the valley during the Running with
the Devil race in the Mojave Desert. 

“Make sure that you’re staying on top of your internal hydration and your external cooling,” the race organizer said into a microphone.

The runners shook their limbs loose and bobbed in place, eager for the start. The annual race is called Running with the Devil, and it takes place less than 30 miles from the glitzy air-conditioned casinos on the Strip in Las Vegas. The forecast called for an unseasonably cool day in the desert, but the racers — running a marathon, 50 kilometers, 50 miles or 100 kilometers — had assembled specifically for a physiological test in the heat.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Rick Maese - “Athlete vs. heat.”

Climate change threatens one of North America's most endangered species

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, springs flow into marshes teeming with birds, bees and dragonflies. These marshes are home to one of North America’s most endangered mammals: the Amargosa vole.

A mouse-like rodent with cinnamon brown fur and a short tail, the Amargosa vole exists nowhere else on Earth — only in patches of wetlands scattered like islands across the desert east of Death Valley National Park. The wetlands depend on water from the springs, and years of drought have shrunk some of the marshes.

Climate change is projected to bring longer and more severe droughts in the future, threatening the springs and increasing the chances that more of the surviving voles could disappear.

The Amargosa vole - it's one of the species
threatened by global warming.

“As climate continues to change, those isolated habitats become more and more precious,” said Patrick Donnelly, executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy, a local environmental group. “And should something happen to even one of those isolated habitats, you may lose an important component of that population.”

The world is losing creatures at an accelerating rate: Species of frogs, lizards, fish and birds have all gone extinct as their habitats have been fragmented, degraded and destroyed by humans. Now, as the Earth grows warmer due to the burning of fossil fuels, the rapid disruption of the climate is placing even bigger stresses on species that are already struggling to survive.

Read The Desert Sun story - “The extinction crisis in a warming world.”