As so many of my fellow interns have been reflecting on the end of their time with the CLM program, I am just finishing up my first month as a CLM intern in the Palm Springs, CA BLM office. September may seem like an unlikely time to start a field job, but in the Colorado Desert, where we still had temperatures topping out above 100° at the end of the month, fall is the beginning of our busy field season. Much of my duties as an intern will be focused on a 350 acre restoration project at Dos Palmas Preserve. Dos Palmas is a 14,000 acre Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) made up of federal, state, and private lands. Dos Palmas is a unique area in that the striking desert landscape is peppered with native palm tree oases.

Dos Palmas Preserve in the Colorado Desert

The San Andreas fault runs directly beneath the preserve, and the underlying geology of the fault has resulted in a higher water table than can be found elsewhere in the desert. Unfortunately, this increased water availability has made the preserve vulnerable to invasions by an aggressive non-native shrub, tamarisk (Tamarix ramossisima). In areas where water is readily available, tamarisk soaks up massive amounts of it, leaving little for native vegetation. Conversely, tamarisk is also able to withstand periods of severe drought, allowing it to out-compete native plants when stressful situations occur. For the past 10 years, the BLM has been waging war on this invasive at Dos Palmas. Now, in areas where it has been successfully eradicated, our task is to restore the landscape to productive wildlife habitat.

One of my first projects was to plan for and oversee several volunteer planting days at Dos Palmas. The local Palm Springs School District had been approached by a European inventor who wanted to test his invention, a planting box designed to aid plant establishment in arid environments, in some of the world’s harshest desert locations. At 200 feet below sea level, with annual rainfall accumulation of less than 4 inches a year and temperatures that reach over 120° in the summer, Dos Palmas seemed like an ideal location to implement such a test. We agreed to host groups of high school students planting the so-called ‘Waterboxxes’ in some of our restoration areas.

Two students assemble a Waterboxx

The Waterboxx was recently nominated as one of Popular Science’s top 10 inventions of 2010; getting plants to grow in the dry heat of the desert is no easy feat, so we’re very excited and hopeful about trying it out! For more details on how the Waterboxx operates, see the company’s website at: www.groasis.com. In short, a box filled with water is placed around the area where seeds are planted, and each day a small amount of water is leaked out onto the planting site through a wick that comes out of the bottom of the box; this creates a moist microenvironment that allows the seeds to germinate and develop deep roots that can reach the groundwater table. The box is designed to prevent evaporation of the water inside of it, and to collect fresh water whenever a rain event occurs.

A Waterboxx with a mesquite seedling growing in it collecting rain water during a rare Dos Palmas shower!

We had a great time learning about the Waterboxx, participating in an international experiment, and teaching the high school students about Dos Palmas! The students did a great job, and we’re hoping to plant more Waterboxxes soon. Most of my prior work experience has almost exclusively involved conducting field work, so it was an exciting change for me to coordinate a volunteer project and to teach other people about conservation! We’ll be monitoring the growth of our seeds in the Waterboxxes over the coming months…more volunteer projects (and hopefully some Waterboxx success stories!) to come…

Students take an interpretive walk through the San Andreas Oasis

Teaching a group of students about the edible fruit and the desert adaptations of the California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera)

Katie Kain
Palm Springs, CA