IntroductionThe geology of the Navajo Nations makes it one of the richest deposit sites for uranium and other non-renewable resources. Uranium is an element naturally found in trace amounts in the Earth's crust and has been used for many different purposes. In the last century, the federal government used uranium ore extensively for nuclear defense. Uranium miners extracted nearly four million tons of ore between 1944 and 1986, resulting in the abandonment of 520 uranium mines on the Navajo Nation (Maldonado 2005). Many Navajo uranium miners report that they were never informed of the dangers of uranium mining and were provided with no protective equipment or adequate ventilation in the mines. In most cases, miners used picks and shovels to extract the uranium ore. At one point there were approximately over 1,000 mines in the reserve. In the early days of mining on the reservation, Navajo miners received minimum wage or less. Many miners in the 1940s were paid less than a dollar. Their work included work as dynamiters, building wooden supports in mines, diggers, haulers and millers. Exposing these workers to dangerous and unsanitary conditions, they were often accompanied by their entire families in the mining camps. In the late 1930s, there was a strong correlation between uranium mining and high rates of lung cancer among uranium miners. Uranium tailings piles are a legacy of the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality of the last century. Many of these tailings sites have been exposed to precipitation and wind carrying uranium away from the original sites. In 1979, near Churchrock, New Mexico, 1,000 tons of radioactive waste and 93 million gallons of acidic, radioactive solution were released into the Rio Puerco. when the capture......middle of paper......pine. American Journal of Botony, 81. pp. 936-949Jackson, RD 1986, Remote sensing of biotic and abiotic plant stress. Annual Review Phytopathology, 24, pp. 265-287.Rock, BN, Vogelmann, JE, Williams, DL, Vogelmann, AF and Hoshizaki, T. 1986. Remote detection of forest damage. BioSci., 36(7). pp 439=445. Ustin, SL and Gamon, JA 2010. Remote sensing of plant functional types. New phytologist., 186(4). Pp 795-816Harder, B. (2005). The heat of the drought destroyed the piñon forests of the Southwest. Science News, 168(16), 244. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database Eichstaedt, PH, 1994 If You Poison Us. Sante Fe, New Mexico: Red Crane Books; 1994. Rock et al. 1986, 1988; Entcheva-Cambell, et al. 1999. Plant responses to stress may have spectral signatures that could be used to map, monitor and measure damage to forests. Remote detection of forest damage.