Great Basin National Park - The Midden (U.S. National Park Service)

The Midden is the resource management newsletter of Great Basin National Park. Both the current issue and back issues are available on this website. Scroll down to find PDF files of complete issues or html files of specific articles. All files are uploaded in PDF, readable with Adobe Acrobat Reader, unless otherwise noted.

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Current Issue:

Winter 2011 (483KB) Winter 2011 (4MB)

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Woodrat, also known as a packrat

What is a midden?
A midden is a fancy name for a pile of trash, often left by pack rats.Pack rats leave middens near their nests, which may be continuously occupied for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Each layer of trash contains twigs, seeds, animal bones and other material, which is cemented together by urine. Over time, the midden becomes a treasure trove of information for plant ecologists, climate change scientists and others who want to learn about past climatic conditions and vegetation patterns dating back as far as 25,000 years. Great Basin National Park contains numerous middens.

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