My Desert Year: Fieldwork in the deserts of California during a sparse rain year

Looking out over Tecopa, with desert holly in the foreground

Some of the plant species I encountered in the desert, clockwise from the top left: Wolf's cholla, dyebush, desert ironwood, rush milkweed, gravel ghost, and Algodones sunflower.

Saltgrass, Distichlis spicata

Some of the animal species I encountered in the desert: desert marble butterfly, sidewinder, a moth that fell prey to a shrike, desert tortoise, desert horned lizard, desert kit fox.

Originally published on cnps-sgm.org.

On a cool, sunny morning in March of 2022, I steered the work truck over the mountains from Las Vegas towards our first field site. I was simmering with the anticipation of five and a half months of exploring beautiful new landscapes and meeting myriads of new plants while working as an ecological monitoring technician. 

The site in question was outside of Tecopa in the Amargosa Basin, where the abundant groundwater bubbles up in hot springs surrounded by marshes. After an arduous hike through crumbling mineral ravines, we emerged into a sheltered cup on the shoulder of a small peak, dotted with tiny wildflowers. Overwhelmed by the newness of everything, I puzzled over annual species like Gravel ghost (Atrichoseris platyphylla), desert five-spot (Eremalche rotundifolia), star gilia (Gilia stellata) and pincushion flower (Chaenactis fremontii) for the first time. What I didn’t realize was that this first site was an anomaly: we would go on to encounter very few living annual plants during this hot, dry desert season. Most of the annuals I identified that day I would only see again as dry skeletons left over from one year, or even multiple years, prior. Desert rainfall is patchy in the best of years, and several years of low rainfall meant that most of the desert annuals didn’t germinate that spring or the spring before.

As the season progressed, spring melted into summer, and temperatures soared. My thoughts turned to reflections like, “how can anyone live here?” “I would be all right never seeing creosote again,” “are they laughing at us back at the air-conditioned office?” and “how long until I can go home?” But despite the abundance of challenges (a few examples: daytime highs of 118 and nighttime lows of 90, an ill-advised night spent camping on the south shores of the Salton Sea while winds whipped toxic dust into our tents, and three hours of digging our truck out of the sand), conducting five and a half months fieldwork in the desert made me into a true desert appreciator.

As an ecological monitoring technician for the Great Basin Institute, contracted by the Bureau of Land Management, my crew visited randomly selected sites throughout the Mojave, Sonoran (Colorado), and Great Basin Desert regions of California - a huge geographic area stretching from near Death Valley in the North, well past Barstow in the west, the Mexican border in the south, and the Colorado River in the east. The data we collected will aid the BLM in making land use decisions and understanding changes in vegetation, pollinators, and soil stability over time (I can only hope they will make responsible decisions).

Some ecosystems stand out in my memory from this enormous area, mostly covered in huge expanses of sparse shrubland dominated by creosote (Larrea tridentata) and burrobrush (Ambrosia dumosa). For example, the haunting wash woodlands of the Sonoran Desert, where scruffy, thorny clumps of desert ironwood (Olneya tesota) and palo verde (Parkinsonia florida) dot wide, braided dry washes. They are eerie and quiet, except when you stumble across an exuberantly blooming ironwood whose pale purple blossoms are covered in bees, beetles, and aphids.

Another fascinating location is the Algodones Dune system southeast of the Salton Sea, a rolling expanse of huge dunes home to many endemic species. It was a delight to encounter the Algodones Sunflower (Helianthus niveus ssp. tephrodes) in bloom, and observe the tracks of beetles who trundled over the sand the night before.

Faced with a dearth of living plants to fawn over, I gained a deep appreciation for the steadfast desert shrubs with adaptations that allow them to persevere through endless days of heat and drought. I was particularly captivated by the genus Psorothamnus, or indigo bush, a group of shrubs in the Pea family with deep purple flowers and pungently-scented leaves. I was intrigued by the vivid orange liquid that emerges from the crushed foliage of Psorothamnus emoryi, which gives it the common name dyebush.

As I endured the physical challenges of existing in the desert, I began to think with deep awe about the Indigenous Californians who have called these deserts home for thousands of years - and not only existed, but thrived, with an intimate knowledge of the plants, animals, climate, and geography of the desert. The Indigenous lands I worked on were those of the Cahuilla, Serrano and Chemehuevi, Mojave, Kumeyaay, and Western Shoshone.

On my final day of fieldwork in late July, we worked hurriedly under overcast skies, keeping a close eye on the rain clouds on the horizon: the dangers of flash floods are very real. That day marked the beginning of several weeks of abundant monsoon rains that deluged the desert, causing massive floods in Death Valley and Joshua Tree that washed out roads and stranded tourists. Late summer monsoon rains sweep over from the Gulf of California and are more characteristic of the Sonoran Desert, but can occur in the eastern Mojave. During August and September, the desert sprang to life as shrubs and annuals grew and bloomed frantically in the briefly moist soil and the still-scorching air.

Alas - I wasn’t there to see it. I’m comforted knowing the desert tortoises, rattlesnakes, horned lizards, kit foxes, verdins and tarantulas appreciated it in my stead.