Top US Nuclear Lab Could Be Impacted by Wildfires, Audit Warns
A top nuclear laboratory in the United States is at risk from wildfires because some mitigation measures have been ignored in recent years, an audit found.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) inspector general said the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico is prone to “future large, high-intensity wildfires that could threaten to seriously interrupt mission work,” as a large fire did in 2000.
The Cerro Grande Fire that year burned more than 7,500 acres of department land, damaging or destroying more than 100 structures and ruining a variety of lab projects and scientific records and forcing the lab to close for 15 days.
Bandelier To Begin Prescribed Burns Tuesday
BANDELIER News:
The National Park Service will begin the process of prescribed fire in Bandelier National Monument, as previously announced, Tuesday, and continue through the end of the week as conditions allow or until completion.
The prescribed burns will occur in previously thinned areas where materials have been piled. Burn operations are completed in phases over several days depending on weather and fuel conditions.
The purpose of these burns is to reduce hazardous fuels and the chance for future high-intensity wildfires. The Highway 4 Pile Unit is approximately 75 acres and extends west from Ponderosa Campground to the Valles Caldera Boundary.
Bandelier Switching To Charge Card Only Payments Feb. 1
BANDELIER News:
Bandelier National Monument will join many other national park sites in the modernization of their fee collection programs by transitioning to charge card only payments.
The modernization collection program begins Monday Feb. 1, 2021 and includes for park entrance fees and campground fees as well as Interagency Pass purchases.
Best ways to pay entrance fees at Bandelier:
Online prior to visiting through Recreation.gov;
By credit card at the automated fee machines at the park entrance station or inside the shelter at Tsankawi;
In-person at the Visitor Center with credit card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay;
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Biocrust research conducted by USGS in Utah in 2016. | Photograph courtesy of Jennifer LaVista
I hadn’t walked very far along the trail in Arches National Park before I started to see the signs. Planted alongside the asphalt of the trail were little posts that read “Your steps matter. Protect park soils.”
Many visitors hadn’t gotten the message. Boot and sneaker prints extended past the boundary, out into the pale red soil. Perhaps the people who had left them didn’t understand that the pleas weren’t just the national park equivalent of “Keep off grass.” When hikers tread off the path, they are trampling on empires incredible, communal organisms that are vital to the health of the desert.