Wall Construction at the San Pedro River
September 2, 2020In July 2020, construction of a 30-foot steel border wall began across the last free-flowing river in Arizona. Despite monsoon floods that push water 140 miles from the San Pedro River’s headwaters in Mexico northwards to its convergence with the…
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Finding Water in Chiricahua Mountains
August 24, 2020In my time living in the Sky Islands, I’ve made a habit of seeking out any water source that’s just deep enough to plop down in and taking a dunk….
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Explore our Springs Map to Understand Conservation Need
July 28, 2020Our Sky Island region is estimated to have 10,000 springs—places where groundwater comes to the surface and provide vital water for plants, wildlife, and people. That is a huge number of water sources to track…
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Rescuing Springs at the Border
July 15, 2020Rancho Los Fresnos is vital protected Mexican land directly south of Coronado Memorial and Coronado National Forest in the southern Huachuca Mountains. Managed by our partners, Naturalia, this ranch is part of…
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Relax with a Bathing Badger
July 1, 2020My personal wildlife watching obsession started at my house near Saguaro National Park last summer with a mysterious paw print I found in a garden water bowl. Wildlife cameras soon…
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Waiting for Monsoon Rain – Where to Track the Season
June 24, 2020With triple digit temperatures here in Tucson, it’s officially time to start waiting, watching, yearning, and hoping for monsoon rains! Sky Island Alliance staff are known to run out of the…
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Springs—Oases of the future?
June 10, 2020Last week, a new paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by Jennifer Cartwright and colleagues (including Sky Island Alliance’s very own Sami Hammer and Louise Misztal) was published that describes the inspiring potential for springs to provide refuge for a…
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Enhancing Resilience to Catastrophic Wildfire
May 27, 2020What do wildland fires have to do with water? Lots, actually! In addition to the more obvious and immediate impacts—burned vegetation and habitat destruction—wildfires have extensive hydrological and ecological effects on watersheds. These impacts include erosion, debris flow, flooding, and changes in water quality—all very important factors for ecosystem health. …
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Springs 101
May 20, 2020What are springs? Springs are incredible places where water comes out of the ground and transforms the area around it into an oasis. In the Sky Islands, if you find water outside of a river…
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Charting the Waters of the Mexican Sky Islands
May 13, 2020“The drainage that comes out of a rock, a crack in the rock, does not give you the option to look for the largest source of water, or for a…
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