Deserts Peter Aleshire Foreword by Geoffrey H Nash, Geologist For Elissa, who has been with me for 30 years: not long in geologic time, but everything in my lifetime DESERTS Copyright © 2008 by Peter Aleshire All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher For information contact: Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aleshire, Peter   Deserts / Peter Aleshire    p cm — (The extreme earth)   Includes bibliographical references and index   ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-6434-2   ISBN-10: 0-8160-6434-2   Deserts—Juvenile literature I Title II Series   QH88.A44 2008   551.41'5—dc22 2007008245 Chelsea House books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755 You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Text design by Erika K Arroyo Cover design by Dorothy M Preston/Salvatore Luongo Illustrations by Melissa Ericksen Printed in the United States of America VB FOF 10 This book is printed on acid-free paper Contents GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction     vii ix xi xii Origin of the Landform: Deserts Section I: Deserts of North America G Sonoran Desert: Arizona and Northern Mexico Saguaros Nourish Civilizations Sky Islands Rise from Desert Seas Organ Pipe National Monument Preserves Desert Sky Islands Add Diversity A Baffling Missing Persons Case A Long Buildup and a Fast Collapse More Clues in the Verde Valley Casa Malpais: Death by Religious Warfare? Superstition Mountains and the Legend of the Lost Dutchman Flowers Blossom in the Desert The Lethal Secret of the Lost Dutchman Buenos Aires: The Grassland Boundary Gila River: Plight of the Desert A Fragile Desert at the Mercy of Human Beings A Massacre That Shocked the Nation G Mojave Desert: California, Arizona A Collision of Continents The World in a Song Death Valley: The Lowest, Hottest Place   12   14 16   17 20 22 23 25 26 27 28 30 31       32 34 35 37 38 Desert-Adapted Species Struggle Creosote: The Oldest on Earth Ice Age Desert Fish Hangs On Joshua Tree National Monument: As Lush As the Mojave Gets The Edge of the Desert Desert Bursts into Flower It Takes a Fungus to Make a Soil Rattlesnakes: Deadly Adaptations Grand Canyon: A Transformed Sliver of the Mojave Grand Canyon Reveals the History of the Earth 41 42 44 44 46 48 49 50 51 54 G Great Basin Desert: Utah, Arizona, Nevada 56 Great Basin: Terrible Thirst and Endless Sagebrush Cataclysm Leaves Wealth of Minerals A Lethal Barrier to Exploration A Sagebrush Realm Adapted to the Sagebrush Ocean Invaders Unhinge an Ecosystem Painted Desert: Cold Winds and Buried Dinosaurs Condors Make a Comeback The “Blueberries” That Predicted an Ocean 56 60 61 62 64 66 66 68     70 G Chihuahuan Desert: Arizona, Texas, Mexico The Mystery of the Cataclysm Century Plant Grows Fatally Tall to Survive A Tale of Hungry Bats and Lush Flowers Creatures That Never Take a Drink Big Bend National Monument: Hard and Historical Carlsbad Caverns National Park: Fantastic Realm White Sands National Monument Chiricahua Mountains: Between Two Deserts Living on Algae’s Efforts San Pedro River: A Linear Oasis The Battle of the Bulls 72 73 74 74 76 78 79 81 82   82   86 89 Section II: Deserts around the World 91 G Sahara Desert: Northern Africa 93 Can Snail Shells Solve a Mystery? A Mystery 1,000 Years Older Than Stonehenge Telltale Stone Tools Yield Clues A Devastating Desert Expansion 94 95 96 97 Blame the Plants for Speed of Sahara Expansion The Geology of the Sahara The World’s Biggest Sand Dunes Sand Dunes Sing The Ghost of Water Living on Million-Year-Old Water In the Grip of a Dry Climate Plants Outwit Drought and Heat Animals Also Evolve Ingenuous Adaptations What Lies Ahead for the Sahara? 98 99 100     102 102      103 104 105 106 106 G Arabian Desert: Middle East 110 G Kalahari Desert: Southern Africa 121 G Australian Deserts: Australia 133 G Gobi Desert: Central Asia 142 The Birth of an Ocean Arabian Peninsula Nourished Civilization The Arabian Horse Hidden Riches of the Arabian Desert A Landscape of Sand For Deserts—Location, Location, Location Plants Cope with Salt and Heat Strange Animals Thrive in Harsh Conditions The Ship of the Desert: The Camel The Original People Studying the Human Mystery The Bushman Diet Drug A Fossil Desert Great Animal Migrations Weaverbird Communes Disastrous Explorations Kangaroo Hops Happily through Hard Times The Aboriginals: The Oldest Culture Living in Dreamtime Assembling a Continental Desert Cutting Off the Moisture Plate Tectonics: The Restless Earth Eastern Gobi Desert Steppe Alshan Plateau and Junggar Basin Semi-Deserts Sand and Soil 111 111 112 113 114 116 117 118     119 123 125    126 127 129     129    134   136   138   139 142 145 145 146 147 147 Wildlife of the Gobi Desert Sand Dunes Swallow Dinosaurs The First Indiana Jones The First Bird 10 G  Atacama: The Oldest Desert: South America Detecting Life A 22,000-Year Rainfall Record El Niño Wreaks Havoc Glossary Books Web Sites Index         147 148               149         151 153 157   158 160   163   167   169   171 Foreword GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG I f you have ever visited a desert, or seen a movie or documentary set in a desert, you might believe that little, if anything, could exist in such an environment A visitor to the Mohave Desert of California, for example, may doubt that without regular rainfall, streams, or lakes, anything other than a few well-adapted reptiles could flourish here After all, we humans would soon perish in an environment devoid of water to drink, not to mention the toll extreme heat would play Access to water is central to our ability to grow crops and develop industry so deserts may seem forbidding and lifeless to us at first glance Deserts are extreme environments that are also biologically diverse, and this contradiction makes them interesting to the scientists such as biologists, geologists, and archaeologists who study them You might think of a desert as a vast expanse of rolling sand dunes, but many consist of a windswept stony pavement, bare bedrock, salt-covered flats, or even ice fields or Arctic tundra What they share is the basic relationship between rainfall and evaporation A desert is defined as a region where evaporation exceeds rainfall or, generally, one that receives less than 10 inches (25 cm) of rain per year Because deserts receive so little rain, geologists are able to study the rocks without a lot of soil or vegetation getting in the way In Deserts, by Peter Aleshire, you will learn the ways deserts can differ You will learn about the sustaining sky islands of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and New Mexico that gather rainwater, allowing wildlife to thrive throughout the seasons as one plant community after another matures at different elevations Another desert you will read about is the Great Basin Desert in the American Southwest where evaporation over thousands of years since the end of the last ice age caused the formation of the Great Salt Lake and the accumulation of massive amounts of salt and other minerals Other deserts covered here are the Sahara of northern Africa with the world’s tallest sand dunes and the Arabian Desert, home to the perfectly adapted “ship of the desert” or camel Deserts are the product of where they are located on Earth because they are produced by climatological factors such as dry winds and rain G  vii  G viii  G  Foreword shadows behind mountains Because of the movement of continents due to plate tectonics, deserts now exist where forests previously grew and, often, petrified wood has been left behind as proof of the changes caused by climate Aleshire’s book is an introduction to the study of deserts that will prove useful to a world where many signs point to a process of unprecedented change due to global warming As areas of Earth are affected by extreme weather patterns, change will come Additional rainfall may benefit some areas, while loss of regular rain may produce more arid, difficult environments that make life harder for their inhabitants Readers will find this book an interesting study of some of the most forbidding yet diverse areas on the planet —Geoffrey H Nash, geologist Preface GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG F rom outer space, Earth resembles a fragile blue marble, as revealed in the famous photograph taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts in December 1972 Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Jack Schmitt were some 28,000 miles (45,061 km) away when one of them snapped the famous picture that provided the first clear image of the planet from space Zoom in closer and the view is quite different Far beneath the vast seas that give the blue marble its rich hue are soaring mountains and deep ridges On land, more mountains and canyons come into view, rugged terrain initiated by movement beneath the Earth’s crust and then sculpted by wind and water Arid deserts and hollow caves are here too, existing in counterpoint to coursing rivers, sprawling lakes, and plummeting waterfalls The Extreme Earth is a set of eight books that presents the geology of these landforms, with clear explanations of their origins, histories, and structures Similarities exist, of course, among the many mountains of the world, just as they exist among individual rivers, caves, deserts, canyons, waterfalls, lakes, ocean ridges, and trenches Some qualify as the biggest, highest, deepest, longest, widest, oldest, or most unusual, and these are the examples singled out in this set Each book introduces 10 superlative examples, one by one, of the individual landforms, and reveals why these landforms are never static, but always changing Some of them are internationally known, located in populated areas Others are in more remote locations and known primarily to people in the region All of them are worthy of inclusion To some people, the ever-shifting contours of the Earth are just so much scenery Others sit and ponder ocean ridges and undersea trenches, imagining mysteries that they can neither interact with nor examine in person Some gaze at majestic canyons, rushing waterfalls, or placid lakes, appreciating the scenery from behind a railing, on a path, or aboard a boat Still others climb mountains, float rivers, explore caves, and cross deserts, interacting directly with nature in a personal way G  ix  G ... is all a trick of the eye, like the shimmering mirage of water caused by the heating of the air close to the hot, dry desert surface Deserts, another volume in the Extreme Earth set, presents... interior spaces, which form the harshest deserts on the planet, including the vast Sahara and the Turkestan and Gobi deserts of Asia So the locations and dynamics of the world’s deserts illuminate vital... of the ribs of 10  G  Deserts The orange and black Gila monster is one of the world’s few poisonous lizards and one of the distinctive reptiles of the deserts of the United States and northern