Canyons, Cultures, and Environmental Change

Looking north into the Temples and Towers of Zion National Park. Photo © 1998 Ray Wheeler.

Looking out over a dramatic landscape of forested mountain peaks, painted deserts, and profound canyons, one sees a sweeping vista that, on a human time scale, appears solid, monolithic, unchanging. Yet two centuries of scientific inquiry and an oral history that extends back a thousand years tells us that this sense of permanence is far from the reality. Continuous change characterizes our planet, and the landscape of the Colorado Plateau is sculpted by dynamic forces, from the shifting climate to the modern impacts of mining, cattle, dams, and urban growth. This dynamic perspective on the Plateau, one of North America’s most geographically and culturally diverse regions, brings a depth of perspective and appreciation that begs a host of related questions: What conditions shaped the modern landscape, and what types of changes are occurring now? What does it all mean for future environmental quality and human habitability of the Colorado Plateau?

This multidisciplinary, multimedia effort addresses some of these questions, and your exploration of the Plateau, beginning with the end of the last ice age and leading to the present, provides a historical context for understanding land cover and land use. You can follow links among different disciplines, integrating information that often is available only to experts. You may also follow links to other sites and reference materials that provide greater depth on specific topics. This is a gateway to the past that brings the future into focus, and we invite all students, teachers, land and resource managers – all interested citizens – to explore the land use history of the Colorado Plateau. Familiarity with the past will deepen our appreciation of the present and, we hope, help guide environmental policy and management decisions that will shape our collective future.

To understand how this effort fits into a continental context, follow this link to "Toward a Land Use History of North America: A Context for Understanding Environmental Change."