Charred carcasses of Mojave yuccas, Joshua trees and chollas are seen at the edge of the York Fire in San Bernardino County, California, inside Mojave National Preserve.In the shadow of last month's York Fire in California's Mojave National Preserve, almost nothing is left amid the rocks and sand, except the charred carcasses of Mojave yuccas, Joshua trees, and chollas.Scientists are not waiting to see what the desert becomes.
"They're already living on the edge," Hughson says."What we're doing here globally is we're cranking up the temperature, and here we're also cranking down the rainfall, the precipitation." Joshua trees, she explains, are having a hard time keeping up with such swift climate changes."Then you get a major stressor like this, that just erases the chalkboard.
Hughson trained as a geologist. She talks about the future of the Joshua tree and what might happen at Cima Dome as if she still assesses these seismic ecological changes at the tempo of geologic time."In the end," she says,"the desert is going to tell us what it's going to be and it's going to show us what it's going to be."Scientists are not waiting to see what the desert becomes.
"There's been hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that have participated. We even had a camel train packing water into these," Hughson says. Restoration work in the desert, she explains, is not for the faint of heart. Sanchez pulls over a big bucket, full of cream-colored Joshua tree fruits she and her team have collected. She takes one out and shakes it:"Sounds like a little rattle," she says. The seeds are about the size of roma tomatoes, but they're brittle and hard. She breaks one open with a crack, and reveals the black hockey-puck-like seeds inside.