Posted September 08, 2019 11:37:25The desert plants that inhabit the deserts of the United States are among the most resilient and enduring species of plants on the planet, and they’re still thriving in many parts of the country, even after a decades-long drought.
In many parts, the desert is still a paradise, a place where wildflowers and other native plants are flourishing, even as drought has devastated many of the natural wonders that make it such a popular tourist destination.
“You can see how it is in Arizona.
They have wildflower farms that have been around for a long time,” said Bob Ebert, a professor at Arizona State University who has studied desert plants.
“There are wildflorals that have survived in the desert for decades.
There are species that have gone extinct because of this drought.”
The botanical parks in Southern California and the Mojave Desert, where the desert’s many native plants grow, were built during the 1950s and ’60s to help protect the desert from pollution, which has been blamed for the death of some desert plants, such as the desert centipedes.
Many of the parks also include the world-famous desert flower gardens that have long provided the area’s signature flowers, which include a variety of wildflora and native shrubs.
But the parks are now facing an uncertain future because of climate change and rising sea levels, and as a result, they have to relocate some of the botanic gardens to a more secure location.
The problem is compounded by the fact that a number of the plants, including the desert botanicals, have a low tolerance for water and lack the ability to withstand drought, said Ebert.
The plants, however, are resilient and can survive for thousands of years.
“When you see a desert plant surviving through a drought, it’s pretty extraordinary,” said John Vass, a botanist and director of the Center for Botanical Gardens Research at Arizona Tech University.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”
Drought, drought, droughtIn the 1980s, Ebert began studying the effects of drought on desert plants in Southern Utah.
In the past, he said, drought was seen as a natural disaster, but now the scientists are looking at climate change, climate change caused by greenhouse gases and rising oceans as potential causes of drought.
In the mid-2000s, the climate was changing much more slowly, and a lot of the deserts and grasslands were getting more and more dry, Ebertson said.
Now, with the rise of climate models, he’s expecting a more erratic pattern of drought and more extreme weather events, including more frequent and severe droughts, floods and fires.
“We are seeing more extreme events,” Ebert said.
“We’re seeing extreme weather, such extreme weather that we never see before.”
He said the climate models are helping to predict the severity of drought, and the plants are adapting.
“They’ve become more resilient and they have more of a tolerance for drought,” Eberths said.
In Southern California, for example, the Desert Centipede and Desert Rose, native shrub-like plants that grow in deserts, have been showing increased resistance to drought, with populations of both species doubling over the past 15 years, said Gary Whelan, director of science for the Desert Botanical Garden.
In other parts of Southern California where the deserts are getting drier, however and at lower altitudes, the species are showing declines in their ability to survive.
The Centipedes are being driven to extinction in some areas, while the Desert Rose is on the verge of extinction in the Mojaves, Ebersons research has shown.
“The desert is now a pretty degraded landscape, and we’re seeing a lot more desert plants dying than we’re actually seeing the desert bloom,” Eberson said, adding that scientists have found that some species are now dying out at rates much greater than other species.
Ebertsen said his study found that drought was the main driver of the desert plant decline.
He said the plants were doing well when they were dying, but when they’re not dying they are starting to die at a rate much faster.
“That’s why we’re in a crisis.
We’re seeing these extreme weather conditions that are getting more frequent, and these are plants that are doing very well,” Ebetson added.”
In the past year, I think we’ve seen the end of the Desert Angel, the end the Desert Flower, and now we’re on the precipice of the end, and it’s really quite dramatic,” he said.”
It’s like a race to the bottom.
We’ve gone from being the wildflourish to the dying flower.
The wildflorets are starting, and then the desert flower is going to die.”