Mojave Desert

A unmanned spacecraft launched in 1997 called Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004. After, its last flyby of one of Saturn's moons on April 21st Cassini, was prepared for what mission planners called mission planners are called its "Grand Finale." On April 22, 2017, a final flyby of Cassini was sent through the gap between Saturn and the inner ring. The spacecraft came within the cloud on jupiter and 200 miles of the most visible edge of its ring. As it has never been done before mission managers…

Joshua trees are relatively fast growers for desert plants. Seedlings will grow at an average rate of 7.6 cm (3 inches) per year in their first ten years. Seedlings will then slow to 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) per year. Many desert plants need to grow to a height of about 1 meter to escape high ground temperatures and shading of adjacent plants, which will negatively affect their growth rate. Joshua trees can exceed 3 meters, which allows them to escape these pressures. DeFalco et al. believes this…

keep in shape for spring. A relative few extend their hiking season by heading to that least-visited region of California: its deserts. Deserts cover over a third of the state, mostly inland areas in the south, with a finger extending north between the eastern Sierra Nevada and the state boundary. Too often considered monotonous “drive-over country”, California’s deserts are actually quite varied and richly reward those who make the effort to know them. Winter temperatures in the south tend to…

Another plant native to deserts is the brittle bush. IT is a small deciduous shrub which grows as a low roundish mound 2-5 ft high. The branches sprout from woody trunks. On the branches are leaves about 1-4 inches long that are covered in a thick mat of short hairs. They act as an insulator against the heat by trapping moisture to reduce the amount lost to perspiration. Deserts do have trees such as the Joshua tree. The largest of the Yucca trees it is only native to the Mojave Desert. Climbing…

life that is made so unstable by her careless parents. The fire would be no threat to her if they guarded her like parents should. Now Jeannette needs to always be on her toes and keep out of danger. When the family moves to a small town in the Mojave desert, there are two major metaphors that can be seen. First, the family is like the…

inability to place solar facilities on shared land with agriculture, as is possible with wind facilities, results in development of renewable energy facilities in large areas of public land in the Southwest United States. Using large areas of arid desert land for solar facility location can affect the native wildlife and vegetation and affect the already limited rainfall and drainage of the region. It is evident that the siting of solar facilities negatively affects areas of critical…

Even though he died nearly 25 years ago, Chris McCandless’ story does not have a clearly explained ending. In the novel Into the Wild, the author Jon Krakauer goes into depth trying to uncover McCandless’ motives for leaving his home in Annandale, Virginia and hitchhiking eventually to the Alaskan bush. Into the Wild tells McCandless’ travels throughout the US and eventually to his last days before he perishes in a bus in the Denali Borough in Alaska. In the beginning of the novel, Krakauer…

getting engulfed in darkness, slowly dieing. Only one thing was on my mind. How do I get in. This is a story of how I got locked out of my house while my family was out of town. My parents decided to plan a trip to go camping in the Mojave desert. Camping in the Mojave, in my eye, is the worst thing ever because all you do there is sit in a chair either freezing cold or melting hot. So I begged my mom to let me stay at a friends house for the weekend. While I was there I called my parents and…

With Kit's considerable amount of knowledge of hunting and cooking skills from living on the frontier, he proved himself to be a valuable member of the expedition team despite his age and his height. Even though Carson was 5' 7", he was considered small compared to the men he lived with. As more and more time passed, Carson, too, became just as skilled in beaver trapping as the others, and he established himself as aggressive and efficient when fighting people who meant harm. His fighting skills…

self-proclaimed “Institute for Investigative Living” in Joshua Tree, CA. Her work draws upon the performance of a prophet proclaiming a better way of living, the art/craft fusion of the Bauhaus, and the humility of a desert hermit. Her property, A-Z West, is a fifty acre site in the California high desert and is an “enterprise that encompasses all aspects of day to day living. Home furniture, clothing, food all become the sites of investigation in an ongoing endeavor to better understand human…