The Land Desk
KSUT publishes selected articles from The Land Desk, a newsletter from Jonathan P. Thompson. Articles are archived here.
The Land Desk explores news from the Four Corners, Colorado Plateau, and Native and Indigenous lands.
It includes, in the words of Thompson, "commentary, fact-checks, myth-busting, essays, photos, and data-visualizations focusing on public lands, water, stolen and colonized lands, climate, politics, economics, environmental justice, energy, resource exploitation..."
Jonathan is a longtime Four Corners-based journalist and author of River of Lost Souls, Behind the Slickrock Curtain, and Sagebrush Empire.
The Land Desk explores news from the Four Corners, Colorado Plateau, and Native and Indigenous lands.
It includes, in the words of Thompson, "commentary, fact-checks, myth-busting, essays, photos, and data-visualizations focusing on public lands, water, stolen and colonized lands, climate, politics, economics, environmental justice, energy, resource exploitation..."
Jonathan is a longtime Four Corners-based journalist and author of River of Lost Souls, Behind the Slickrock Curtain, and Sagebrush Empire.

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The 1911 flood was likely the largest on the Animas River over the last several hundred years or more. On the San Juan River near Bluff, researchers found no evidence of floods higher than the 1911 debris, indicating it “may represent the largest flood on the San Juan River for a much longer time period than 1880-2001.”
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Judge tosses Utah's lawsuit seeking to eviscerate the national monuments.
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The Land Desk's Jonathan P. Thompson contemplates the mystery of several people who have gone missing in the San Juan Mountains this year.
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Atlantic Richfield Company purchases more than 1,000 acres of patented mining claims and other properties from Arizona-based Disposition Properties in and around Rico, Colorado, dimming the threat of massive development.
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A guest post from Dave Marston and Writers on the Range looks at housing prices in Durango and southwest Colorado.
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A 1946 report called for the Colorado River System to be dammed, diverted, and industrialized.
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Thompson talks about writing from a distance and covering San Juan County Utah in a KSUT Conversation.
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The Marshall Fire tore through suburbs on Colorado’s Front Range on Dec. 30, destroying 991 structures and damaging 127. The ignition point and cause is still under investigation. But there is little question that climate change-induced drought, weather whiplash, and warming temperatures set the stage for the wintertime conflagration.
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A USGS coring study of Lake Powell reveals water quality calamities of the past, many of them originating in the mountains around Silverton.