A letter to past myself from your present (or future self?),  When you used to look at a map of the US, the state of Wyoming would barely register as a blank rectangle floating in the middle of the country, however when you get back and scan the poster on your bedroom wall you can’t…

Up early on a Saturday morning we shuffle out the door and heap into vans ready to embark on our 10 day road trip around the state. First stop: Independence Rock. A weathered feature of the Granite Mountain range, this outcrop was originally named by Native American tribes across Wyoming and the Rocky Mountains as…

If you ever ask what Wyoming’s most precious natural resource is you will predictably be answered by a chorus of responses citing its wealth of oil, coal, and natural gas stores, but in truth its most precious resource is water. One look around the semi-arid landscape and any doubt of what governs life out west…

Ecology is first and foremost a science based upon observation. Environments biotic and abiotic factors are copiously described in detail, organismal behavioral relationships are watched and recorded, surveys are designed to count biodiversity and abundance, and individuals are analyzed and marked to gather data on community health and watch populations into the future. All of…

1735 miles away from home, 5-4 hours by airplane or 1 day 49 minutes by car per google maps nearest estimation. It certainly seems that I have traveled to a distant land. Gone are the tall buildings and bustling streets, the green forested hills of eastern Pennsylvania have shrunk and stretched into the flat prairie…

Space. Vast chasms of it, unbroken by tree or building or person as it sprawls outward limitlessly into the pale blue horizon. In an open prairie like this, space seems to take on the illusion of weight, a sort of ubiquitous presence that you can almost glean in creases of river beds and stretching green…

Hello! My name is Maclaine Oskin and I am a rising sophomore hoping to pursue an environmental science and urban studies double major throughout my undergrad here at the University of Pittsburgh. After graduation I am interested in exploring the implications of urbanization on the environment, as well as the integration and amalgamation of natural…