North American Desert

▪ region, North America

Introduction

 vast, irregular belt of inhospitable terrain (desert) that stretches north to south down the western side of the North American continent from southern Oregon and Idaho to northern Mexico. It roughly corresponds to the sheltered, and hence rain-starved, intermontane region lying between the soaring barrier of the Rocky Mountains to the east and the moist, fertile coast ranges fringing the Pacific Ocean to the west. Estimates of the size of the region vary, depending upon definition and year, from about 500,000 to more than 730,000 square miles (1,300,000 to 1,900,000 square kilometres).

      The physical geography and human utilization of this huge area exhibit great internal variety, but its overall aridity—associated with an excess of potential evaporation over precipitation, great temperature extremes, frequent winds, localized storms, and a predominance of starkly eroded, sun-beaten landscapes—give it an unquestioned unity. Scientists, in naming this whole ecological complex, or biome, the North American Desert, are merely echoing the legend of a “Great American Desert” established as early as the 1820s by the vivid reportage of an expedition led by the American pioneer explorer and engineer Stephen H. Long.

      All forms of life, from lowly plants and insects to people, have had to struggle to survive in the region, and the North American Desert thus has had enormous importance in the development of the continent. Descendants of the earliest inhabitants, the desert-culture Indians, are still found in the area. Their ranks were swollen in the 19th century by tribes thrust westward in the great dispossession that followed the advance of European settlement from the Eastern Seaboard into the continental interior, and the region is now the home of most of the U.S. Indian (Native American) population. The legacy of much earlier population movements from farther south has lent a distinctly Spanish element to the area, while modern American settlement has added its own contribution in the form of sheep and cattle grazing, military installations, and small but often rapidly expanding oases of mining and manufacturing. All the peoples of the North American Desert, whatever their origin, have their lives molded by the basic and all-pervading lack of water and minimal vegetation cover.

Physical features

Physiography

      Differences in latitude, elevation, climate, topography, vegetation, soil, and human use have allowed the North American Desert to be subdivided into regions of cold mid-latitude and hot mid-latitude desert. The continent's major deserts are associated with the intermontane Basin and Range Province of the western United States, northern Mexico, and the Colorado Plateau region of northern Arizona, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah.

      Classified as a cold mid-latitude desert is the Great Basin Desert, which lies in the physiographic Great Basin that covers nearly all of Nevada, western Utah, and portions of surrounding states. It constitutes the largest section of the Basin and Range Province and includes the Great Sandy Desert of southeastern Oregon, the Snake River Plains of southern Idaho, the volcanic Black Rock Desert of northwestern Nevada, and the Great Salt Lake Desert of western Utah. Although they are not usually assigned to the physiographic Great Basin, the Red Desert of southern Wyoming and the Painted Desert of northern Arizona are sometimes considered as extensions of the Great Basin Desert.

      To the south the Great Basin Desert merges with the Mojave (Mojave Desert) (Mohave) Desert and the hotter mid-latitude deserts. In California near the undefined Great Basin–Mojave border are the sun-scorched landscapes of Death Valley; the valley's maximum depth of 282 feet (86 metres) below sea level is the continent's lowest point. The Mojave merges in the southeast with the Sonoran Desert, which covers much of Baja California and runs along the Gulf of California coast to the Mexican state of Sonora. Its subdivisions include the Yuma and Colorado deserts. To the east lies the huge Chihuahuan Desert, extending from southern New Mexico (where the dazzling gypsum dunes of White Sands National Monument are found) and western Texas to the highlands of central Mexico.

Geology

      Most of the North American Desert—and all the salty-lake remnants—occupies areas covered by geologically recent Quaternary deposits (i.e., those less than 1.6 million years old) and mountains thrust up and folded by movements in Tertiary time (or about twice as old), with some plains and plateaus consisting of sediments up to 225 million years old.

      Through long periods of erosion, the landforms produced from these rocks have become characteristically sharp and angular (except in the heavily eroded badlands regions) and contain, in their harsh but breathtaking beauty, some of North America's finest scenery. The action of wind, temperature changes, ephemeral streams, and floods, coupled with the general lack of dense vegetation and deep soils, have all been involved in this molding process. The individual deserts (desert pavement) are characterized by plateaus, gorges, ravines, and alluvial fans washed out at the feet of mountains. Deserts of the bolson type contain playas (dried-up lake remnants) and mud and salt lakes and flats. Deserts of the hammada type are characterized by extensive rocky surfaces with boulder or gravel coverings, sometimes blackened and wind-scoured, with magnificent buttes, mesas, and other isolated mountain remnants rising high above the flat landscape. Stretches of shifting sands known as ergs (erg)—the extensive Algodones Dunes of the Colorado-Yuma desert are a notable example—are found at lower elevations, with the shallow troughs of arroyos carrying intermittent streams from surrounding uplands to be lost in the sands.

Soils

      The soils of the North American Desert have origins similar to those of more humid regions, but they are less enriched by organisms and less leached of constituents. On older surfaces most belong to the dry-soil order called aridisols, but local variations occur, reflecting differing salt and mineral composition and presence or absence of organic matter. On younger eroded surfaces or those infilled with alluvial (riverine) sediment, weakly developed entisols occur. With proper management, the more fertile soils can be productive.

Climate

      Regardless of the latitude, longitude, and elevation, a harsh and extreme temperature regime exists in the North American Desert, with a high frequency of cloudless days and intense solar radiation, infrequent and intense storms, winds carrying dust and sand, low relative humidity, and rapid evaporation or sublimation of snow. Regionally specific climatic zones exist, ranging from temperate in the Great Basin and Painted Desert to subtropical in the western Sonoran and northern Chihuahuan sections to tropical in the Sonoran gulf coast. Average annual temperatures range from approximately 49° F (9° C) in the northern deserts (Black Rock) to 73° F (23° C) in the Sonoran Desert and 77° F (25° C) at the bottom of Death Valley. Average annual rainfall varies from 6 to 12 inches (150 to 300 millimetres) in the Great Basin Desert, 2 to 6 inches in the Mojave Desert (a low of 2 inches in Death Valley), 10 to 11 inches in the Red and Painted deserts, 8 to 18 inches in the Sonoran Desert, and 12 to 14 inches in parts of the Chihuahuan Desert. Precipitation may be seasonal and characteristically is erratic, scattered, or intense. Snowfall of 12 to 24 inches occurs in most of the northern deserts, decreasing to only a trace in the Sonoran Desert. Winds are directional, with speeds averaging seven to nine miles per hour. Average relative humidities are generally less than 50 percent (20 percent for Death Valley), but 10 percent or less is not uncommon. The growing season varies from 90 to 140 days in the northern deserts to more than 300 days along the Sonoran gulf coast and in the Baja Peninsula.

Plant life

 In the North American Desert, available moisture is the most critical factor for life. Local environmental factors also are significant in determining the nature of desert plant communities and their dependent animal life. Most desert plants are xerophytes (plants adapted to arid conditions) or phreatophytes (deep-rooted plants that are dependent on a permanent water supply and survive by tapping groundwater). Sagebrush and saltbush characterize the Great Basin region, with Joshua trees, creosote bush, and burroweed typical of the Mojave. The Sonoran Desert has a thorn scrub of shrubs (mesquite, paloverde, ironwood, burrobush, smoke tree, and cat's claw) and a great variety of moisture-preserving succulents, such as cacti. The Arizona Upland Desert is noted for the giant saguaro and barrel cacti, while the Chihuahuan Desert is characterized, notably in its eastern part, by a ground cover of open mesquite, a scattering of larger trees, and shrubby undergrowth, including the yucca, prickly pear, agave, and other varieties of cactus. Plant life and associated algae, lichens, mosses, and insects become more complex as temperature and moisture conditions improve.

Animal life

      The North American Desert harbours an abundant variety of insects, including grasshoppers that occasionally reach destructive proportions. Lizards, snakes, and other reptiles, the most conspicuous animals, are dependent on plant fluids or devoured animals for moisture. Likewise, desert birds are largely independent of water sources (and are seen almost everywhere), as they derive their moisture from the insects and spiders that they eat. Rodents (including mice, rats, and squirrels), rabbits, and bats are the most numerous mammals; essentially nocturnal, they remain underground during the heat of the day and, like the birds and reptiles, obtain moisture from their food. Higher up in the food chain are such carnivores as coyotes, bobcats, foxes, and skunks; and the largest desert mammal, found at higher elevations, is the bighorn sheep. Protective coloration, often remarkably complex, is an important feature of desert life.

The people and economy

      As ancient dwellings, rock paintings and carvings, and other archaeological remains testify, desert-culture Indians had developed a distinctive way of life within the approximate boundaries of the North American Desert thousands of years before the coming of Europeans. Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to penetrate the southwestern area, and their legacy has molded much of the character of the region. It was only in the 19th century that a great wave of settlement, often attracted by the lure of mineral wealth, swept westward over the whole area on its way to the more fertile regions of the Pacific coast; left behind was a scattering of settlements focused on mineral wealth and irrigated regions and, even more sparsely, in the vast areas given over to sheep and cattle grazing.

      Large areas of the contemporary landscape are occupied by Indian reservations, a legacy of America's continental expansion. Military installations, some associated with past testing of nuclear weapons, also take up vast areas. The various types of agriculture encompass dryland farming, sheep and cattle grazing, and more intensive developments on irrigated oases. Mineral exploitation has continued, often to the detriment of the natural environment, and manufacturing has become associated with growing urban settlement in the more favoured regions. Air pollution, caused by the burning of fossil fuels in population centres along the Pacific coast as well as in the interior, now reaches the most remote areas of the desert. Tourism also has grown immensely. Many areas near urban centres now support luxurious golf courses and parks, all dependent on imported water for irrigation. In spite of the increasing development of dams, reservoirs, and canals, the lack of water has remained a severe limitation to agricultural, urban, and industrial expansion and is sure to remain an important and controversial issue in the future.

Study and exploration (European exploration)

      The Indians of the region accumulated a rich natural lore during the thousands of years of their adaptation to the desert environment, but it was left to Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and other 16th-century Spanish explorers to provide the first written descriptions of the region, particularly of the southwestern portion. Although Stephen H. Long never saw the true North American Desert, his depiction of the “Great American Desert” fired the American public's imagination. John C. Frémont's mapping of the region in the 1840s foreshadowed a host of reports, often generated by the huge land grants made to railroads and land companies and written by 19th-century surveyor-engineers. In 1878 the geologist John Wesley Powell (Powell, John Wesley) made a significant report on the arid West, accurately forecasting the detrimental consequences of imposing on arid regions ways of life more appropriate to humid lands. More diversified studies followed—the first arid-lands research laboratory was founded at Tucson, Ariz., in 1903—and contemporary studies have included the important International Biological Program of ecological investigation.

Roy Eugene Cameron

Additional Reading

POST-TO-PUBLISH TEST P2P2 On the natural setting of the North American Desert, historical works include Daniel Trembly MacDougal, Botanical Features of North American Deserts (1908, reprinted 1971), early investigations in the southwestern United States and in Mexico; Daniel Trembly MacDougal et al., The Salton Sea: A Study of the Geography, the Geology, the Floristics, and the Ecology of a Desert Basin (1914); and John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, new ed., edited by Wallace Stegner (1962). A massive survey of geographic research on deserts is presented in William G. McGinnies, Bram J. Goldman, and Patricia Paylore (eds.), Deserts of the World: An Appraisal of Research into Their Physical and Biological Environments (1968). Other relevant works are Slater Brown, "The Great American Desert,” in his World of the Desert (1963); Edmund C. Jaeger, The North American Deserts (1957); and Ann Sutton and Myron Sutton, The Life of the Desert (1966), an abundantly illustrated volume focusing on desert biology. Other special studies include William A. Burns (ed.), The Natural History of the Southwest (1960); and Carle Hodge and Peter C. Duisberg (eds.), Aridity and Man: The Challenge of the Arid Lands in the United States (1963). Gordon L. Bender (ed.), Reference Handbook on the Deserts of North America (1982), is an informative source.Roy Eugene Cameron

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