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Midway Geyser Basin and the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, Yellowstone National Park

This is a second and very different sketch than the one posted two weeks ago.

    There are still critters to add, bison crossing near the hot spring, a few birds and maybe a bat, but it’s essentially complete. The idea for this one developed as a visual counter-punch to the first sketch I drew two weeks ago of Whitebark Pines at Yellowstone. That one shows high-elevation Climate Change effects to the park, while this sketch shows thermal features and lodgepole pine forests (where most visitors go).  Both show all the critters and plants that will be effected by Climate Change, change that is already seriously in progress.

    Below is one of my reference photos of the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, largest hot spring in America. The sketch shows a burned-out forest and lots of diseased trees caused by warmer winters. Warmer winters allow pine bark beetles and then blister rust to ravage these forests. Warmer and drier summers then mean bigger wild fires, a possible lowering of the summer water table – and many changes in wildlife populations. Stay tuned, the first painting is already underway. These two are funded by the Crater Lake Institute, but more like them are being planned through the National Park Service Climate Change Response Program. It’s a bold series of paintings I’m thrilled to be involved with.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.