From mountains to sand dunes to wetlands, Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve in Colorado has a terrific diversity of ecosystems. Each landscape is affected differently by the seasons. With fall descending on the park, that means patches of aspens in the alpine ranges are starting to show their gorgeous yellow colors. What a view! Photo by Patrick Myers, National Park Service.

The Volcanic Tablelands near Bishop, California, are a vast, rugged landscape formed over 700,000 years ago by the Long Valley caldera. In this high desert environment, generations of Paiute and Shoshone Indians once resided, leaving behind an extensive collection of carefully chiseled petroglyphs in the rocks. Now a destination for rock climbers, these fragile treasures are protected by the Bureau of Land Management. Photo by Abhilash Itharaju (http://ift.tt/18oFfjl).

It’s National Wildlife Refuge Week! Whether you’re looking for flippers, feathers, fur, fins or fangs, you can find amazing animals at wildlife refuges. Refuges across the country provide habitat for more than 700 species of birds, 220 species of mammals, 250 reptile and amphibian species and more than 1,000 species of fish. There’s at least one national wildlife refuge in every state and territory and within an hour’s drive of most major metropolitan areas. Photo of seals at Nantucket National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts by Amanda Boyd, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.