Avery Lill

Spruce beetles have chomped on about 40 percent of spruce-fir forests in the state in the last couple of decades. You can see the most striking damage in the Rocky Mountain National Park, the San Juan Mountains, the West Elk Mountains and the Sawatch Range. Seth Davis is an assistant professor of forestry at Colorado State University.

Near the ghost town of Gothic, in northwest Colorado, there’s a meadow that’s been a little warmer than the others around it. Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory have heated it artificially. for 30 years. They call it “The Warming Meadow Experiment.” Put another way: they created their own climate change to see what would happen. Researchers recently turned the heaters off. A member of the meadow team, Stephanie Kivlin is going to help us understand.

Women make up only seven percent of all firefighters and about half of paid fire departments have never even hired a female firefighter. When Barbara Huber joined the Pueblo fire department two decades ago, she was one of two women there. Now there are eight. This week, she became the first woman to take over as the chief of the Pueblo Fire Department.

Altitude sickness is an old menace of mountaineers. It can also plague really anyone who visits the higher elevations of Colorado. Headaches, nausea and dizziness can cut a hiking trip short, and ignored or untreated, it can even be fatal. Dr. Andrew Luks is part of a team that researches and maintains the Wilderness Medical Society’s Practice Guidelines on altitude sickness. They recently updated their findings.

Cancer is a leading cause of death in dogs. The Morris Animal Foundation in Denver is working on a multi-year study to understand what might be causing that cancer. The study is also uncovering other health findings connected to dogs. Dr. Kelly Diehl is a veterinarian and the Senior Director of Science and Communications for the Morris Animal Foundation.