Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

Sure. But you want to be careful what else is burned-plants and vegetation that require long periods of time to regrow is more what I'm thinking of.

 

I'm more concerned about further damage done to the Joshua Trees , it takes at least 60 years for them to grow into maturity

 

Again the issue is exotic grasses. They are well adapted to fire while the native Mojave species aren’t particularly. Thus the end result of burns, prescribed or wild, is the further expansion and entrenchment of exotic grasses and the displacement of native species in the burn area.

I don’t know what the solution is and I’ve not seen that resource managers really do either. For the present though it appears fire of any kind in the Mojave is a bad thing. The native ecosystem doesn’t appear to benefit from fire in the way other southwestern ecosystems do.

 

I agree with @DVexile . This link sums it up nicely for the Mojave https://www.nps.gov/im/mojn/invasive-and-exotic-plants.htm

Prescribed Burns in Forest areas are absolutely necessary for good management. Forest managers learn that the hard way in San Diego in 2003 & 2007 when Forest that hadn't burned in a hundred years finally burned and created a regional crisis the cause of devastation for thousands.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Fire

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_Fire

 

If more frequent burning isn't the answer for this ecosystem, could cutting and maintaining giant fire breaks help? It would be expensive and destroy lots of land, but maybe that's better than these gigantic wildfires?

Fire breaks, if regularly maintained, might also provide barriers to invasive plant spread... or maybe it provide them with an expressway, I dont know.

It is so tragic to see the joshua forests go up in flames.

 

Invasive species come in a variety of different ways. Boots, vehicles, wind blown, etc. Cutting huge fire breaks might help but I'm not sure it's the right thing either-aside from the scares it would leave, they also create erosion. I just don't know enough about deserts and managing the flora/fauna. Other than physically removing the non-native grasses, etc.

 

https://explorersweb.com/2020/08/18/roland-banas-completes-first-summer-crossing-of-death-valley/

not off road, not me, but great social distancing Yikes!!!

 

I suspect that this is fake news.
I say so because there is a group of hard core Sierra Clubbers who do stuff like this. I have read reports of a man and woman who hiked "across" Death Valley in August several years ago. I am unsure of their route, but I suspect that a similar trek has been done.

 

Badwater ultra marathon is 135 mile race from Badwater to Whitney Portal every year in July. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badwa...cribes itself,the trailhead to Mount Whitney.

 

Anybody else not know that Ubehebe Crater was once called "Coyote's Basket" by Native Americans?

One of my favorite series is called Aerial America and today (it first aired in 2016), they're focusing on Southern California. It's fitting they should start with Death Valley.What's sort of ironic is the mention of the 134º max temp being the "hottest" in the world when just a couple of weeks ago, 136º became the record breaker.

And they talk about the BW Marathon which actually goes through the Owens Valley...

 

"Resource Managers" are two key words. They often create the same conditions that allow massive burns.

For example, after the massive Hayman Fire southwest of Denver the official recovery plan was seed the area with fast growing non-native grass and plant pine saplings.

That was stupid, locals planted native willows along the waterways as a firebreak. Recovery plan should have also included planting native buffalo grass and aspen. Just goofy to plant pines as a recovery effort when planting aspen would prevent a catastrophic fire for 50 years.

 

The short fix produces trees and grasses immediately (nearly so) and hopefully prevents seasonal erosion. In the end, just makes the place a little more flammable.

 

Good article on the aftermath of the Cima Dome fire. About 1/4 of the Joshua tree forest gone. Discusses in detail invasive grasses and also a hypothesis I wasn’t familiar with: ranching produced some of the denser Joshua tree stands in the Mojave (which if true would seem to explain Lee Flat as well as Cima Dome).

https://www.latimes.com/environment...oys-the-heart-of-a-beloved-joshua-tree-forest

 

I think the article was pretty good.

I'm pretty sure it's not just grazing. The reality is, all who visit may unknowingly spread and take seed. Whether it's on tires, your shoes as you hike through the park, birds, and so on. Maybe not the same rate as the cows though.

 

Yes, now that the invasive species are there they spread plenty of ways other than by cattle. The were originally distributed by hitching a ride on the coats of grazers brought from Europe but now that they are here they spread just fine without the grazers.

What was interesting to me in the article was that the dense Joshua tree forests like on Cima may have achieved their density only because of grazing. The grazers don’t eat the blackbrush which is a nursery species for Joshua trees. So you end up with a landscape with far more blackbrush than usual which then means far more Joshua tree seedlings can reach maturity than is usual. So these unusually dense Joshua tree forests that have become iconic are perhaps not natural to begin with!

 

How these areas become what they are is a bit of a conundrum for sure.

 

Some August wandering in the northern half of the park. Was a fun moment to be out of the truck and have two fighter jets take a hot lap through a nearby canyon.

 

@another395Taco how were the temps on the Flats ?

 

What irritates me is in alpine areas after a burn pines are replanted. Anywhere in North America over 7000' elevation aspen is native.

There's been a heroic effort to replant pines after a burn when the smart thing is plant aspen in alpine areas. Aspen spread fast on open terrain after a burn, a single aspen can produce about 100 clones underground in a year via the suckering they do from the roots of the original tree.

And aspen doesn't burn. Cut a live aspen branch, throw it into a firepit and it will douse the fire. Cut a live pine branch, throw it into a firepit and it will escalate the fire.

 

Never mind that pines look like shit where aspen should be.