Study seeks to balance desert needs with man-made sprawl

Monday, July 27, 1998 | 9:04 a.m.

To get from here to there often means passing through land controlled by two or three states, several counties, multiple federal agencies and any of the four branches of the military.

The bureaucratic maze matters little to a stand of Joshua trees, but can halt a botanist or a geologist dead in the sand.

As a result, experts say the Mojave Desert has been managed haphazardly, with work that gets done dictated by political boundaries instead of those created by nature.

Now, a group of private and government researchers is trying to change that.

Led by the U.S. Geological Survey, a six-year study of the Mojave is designed to draw a more complete picture of the desert and help land managers better protect the fragile resources in their care.

What the desert needs, the group says, is unbiased scientific input that will help land managers balance competing demands.

The Mojave Desert encompasses 50,000 square miles, covering from sections of southeastern California, Southern Nevada and corners of southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona.

It is home to six military bases, four national parks or monuments and millions of acres of public lands that have been used over the years for grazing, mining and recreation.

The Wilderness Society, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, recently listed the Mojave as one of the country's 15 most endangered wild lands, in large part because of a proposal by the Army to expand the Fort Irwin training center northeast of Barstow, Calif.

"There is tremendous interest in preserving these areas for recreation and wildlife habitat, especially from the booming populations around Los Angeles and Las Vegas," said Norbert Riedy, director of conservation programs for the society's California-Nevada office.

At the core of the USGS study is the fragile nature of the desert and how human intrusion has affected the plants and animals that populate what many people consider a lifeless wasteland.

The study, called "Where Desert Meets City," focuses in part on the environmental effects of the growing urban areas within and around the Mojave. More than 2 million people live within the desert's boundaries and as many as 40 million more are within a day's drive.

Measuring the effects of population growth isn't easy, the USGS says, mostly because knowledge of the Mojave is limited. And comprehensive research is rare, in part because of competing private and government interests - millions of acres, for example, are posted off-limits by the military.

"Where Desert Meets City" is meant to break down some of those barriers. The USGS plans to work closely with the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines, as well as the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.

The USGS and its partners have established a massive database at Utah State University, a collection of information that eventually will be managed by the Army, which operates Fort Irwin.

Maj. Barry Johnson, public affairs officer for Fort Irwin, said the Army takes the desert's environmental needs seriously.

"It's a necessity of doing business," he said. "It's become a way of life. Our people are very cognizant of what we need to do. They understand what areas are sensitive. The tortoise areas are marked and there are biologists and archaeologists on the ground, ensuring we're doing the right thing."

The study group began its work last fall at three sites: Near Fort Irwin, where scientists are looking at how old rail lines affected water flow and plant life; at the edge of Death Valley, where researchers are studying how well the desert recovers decades after a mining operation was abandoned; and at Ivanpah Valley in the Mojave National Preserve, where mining and grazing have changed the environment.

Over the next three years, the study will focus on urban growth, desert soils and how plants and animals recover after a region of the desert has been used and abandoned.

One of the most ambitious parts of the study will be a desert-wide remote sensing project that will allow scientists to study long-term growth in the Mojave and collect information that will help in future planning and land management.