When geologists see a straight line running across a landscape,
they get suspicious. Straight lines don’t happen by accident;
they usually mean something. Such a line, about 155 miles long,
leads north out of Grand Canyon country into Utah. It’s called
the Hurricane Fault. Nineteenth-century geologist Clarence
Dutton declared this one of the Earth’s most interesting
“dislocations.” Sitting high and mainly dry, residents of the
Colorado Plateau don’t have to worry about rising sea levels as
the Earth’s climate warms. But in recent years parts of the
plateau have experienced record warming and low moisture,
damaging winter storms, and severe wildfires and flooding.
Whether these are short-term weather events, or signs of a
longer-term change in climate, remains to be seen. But some in
the region are already adapting to what they fear could be even
greater impacts caused by an altered climate. For many residents
of the mountain west, warmer temperatures may not sound too bad.
But small differences in temperature