This is the start of my 5th week in Palm Springs, California. I drove here 860 miles in total from California’s North Coast in Humboldt County. I lived there for 3 years while attending Humboldt State University. The climate on the North Coast is nearly a constant 60 degrees F, with a humidity of around 80% so it always feels about 10 degrees warmer than it actually is. There are redwood trees and I was right by the ocean. I began my journey across California to my new home in the desert promptly after graduation. I packed up my car, and my two cats and two days later I was in a whole new world with a whole new climate that I was completely unfamiliar with. As I write this, today’s forecast predicts 122 F with the relative humidity at 14%. Of course Yesterday they said it was going to be 114 F and it got to at least 119 F, so we’ll see how hot it gets today!
My first desert sunrise!
My first day at the Palm Springs BLM office included a tour of the field site that we would be focusing on over the course of my 5 month internship. The place is located next to the Salton Sea and has an elevation of -226 feet below sea level, which makes the area hotter than Palm Springs who’s elevation is 479 feet above sea level. I will be working at Dos Palmas Oasis (elevation -210 feet below sea level) and part of it sits right on top of the famous San Andreas Fault. The landscape is dominated by Larrea tridentata or Creosote bush (which can live 1000 years!!!!), Allenrolfia occidentalis or Pickleweed, Atriplex lentiformis or Quailbush, and several tree species including two types of Misquote. I’m currently in the process of learning the rest of the species in the area. In addition to plant species, the Oasis is habitat for the endangered Desert pupfish that we will be monitoring and protecting and also offers critical habitat for an endangered Rail (which is a bird).
Driving to a field transect site at Dos Palmas
The waters of the Oasis are however in big trouble. Let’s go into some history, this area started off as a natural Oasis and a critical watering hole in the desert as Europeans passed by 150 years ago and of course also for the indigenous people who knew about the place and lived here since time immemorial. Things changed dramatically here in the 1930’s as construction began of the Coachella Canal, a 122 mile long unlined canal that brought water from the All American Canal that channels Colorado River water. The water now is brought across the desert in the Coachella Canal to farms in the Coachella valley. This unlined canal also inadvertently provided water all along its expanse via seepage through the ground and greatly increased the water at Dos Palmas as water here cannot penetrate the depths of the ground due to the presence of the San Andreas Fault. In 2006 a new concrete lined canal was dug parallel to the old canal and when the water was diverted into the new lined canal the water supply for Dos Palmas was cut off.
Three years after the water was diverted into the new canal and Dos Palmas was cut off from it’s water supply, mitigation efforts began where by some water from the canal was siphoned into the old unlined canal where it could once again flow through the ground to recharge the waters of the desert oasis. There are large(ish) seepage ponds in place for Dos Palmas as well as small ones specifically designed to be “sheep drinkers” for the desert big horned sheep that live in the adjacent mountains. Pipe lines were also put in place to feed even more water back into Dos Palmas and protect its endangered species. This was a wonderful improvement from nothing, but 1.3 years had passed with no canal water entering the system and 2. This new supply of water was next to nothing compared to what Dos Palmas once received from the canal for about 60 years.
Monitoring efforts began 6 years ago and continue today. They document the plants in the area and their response to the mitigation efforts. All in all quite a lot of Dos Palmas, particularity an area known as the San Andreas Oasis, is looking very sad. Plants are dead or dying, Oasis’s are dry or drying, and in response many wells have been dug to keep some of the Oasis filled. However not every Oasis has a well and some oasis’s are completely dry. Don’t get me wrong though, this area is still beautiful and the Oasis’s that have water are spectacular!
A water meter sits high and dry at the San Andreas Oasis
Here is a view of a healthy Oasis filled with water
Much of my job this summer aside from SOS (Seeds of Success) work, will be monitoring plant communities at Dos Palmas as well as monitoring the endangered species that call this place home. As long as I don’t step on a rattlesnake (and there are a lot of snakes out here!) and I stay hydrated I think I am going to continue enjoying this work as much as I have since I arrived. This internship is fantastic, I love working and I love the desert!!!!
Heading down to the Salton Sea to rescue endangered fish in an area that was rapidly drying up. Sitting on the water (those white dots) are American White Pelicans