White Sands National Monument – A Desert within a Desert

White Sands National Monument ©2013 Bo Mackison

White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico is a desert within a desert.

The park is surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert – a desert of low scrub plants. This desert of white sand dunes has even less vegetation than the Chihuahuan Desert.

Sherpa and I stopped at White Sands on our cross-country trip from the Midwest to Tucson. Since I had a limited amount of time for photographs, I attempted to capture the essence of the park in a few select photographs.

The above landscape photo shows a progression of dunes, each topped with low grasses and yucca. The dunes are spotted with plants that thrive in gypsum — the white sand is pure gypsum. Gyp moonpad and gyp nama are common.

Sand Dune ©2014 Bo Mackison

This photo of the arch of a crescent-shaped dune is a small part of the larger desert landscape.

This kind of landscape photograph is often called an intimate landscape, and is a technique pioneered by Eliot Porter. Typically there is little emphasis on the horizon, the lighting, or a long shot of a vista, but instead the focus is on pattern, texture and composition.

Intimate landscapes often have an abstract feel.

Sand Drift © 2014 Bo Mackison

The ripples of the sand drifts offered plenty of opportunity for a close up photo.

The texture of the fine sand is nearly visible, the texture of sugar. This isn’t a typical macro-photograph, but it does give a good indication of the movement paths of wind-blown sand.

Portrait Session in White Sands © 2014 Bo Mackison

A portrait in a landscape, or an unexpected detail in a landscape.

When I saw this photographer setting up his equipment for a portrait, I had to get a shot even though they were far away. It gives a different perspective of White Sands – the grasses in the foreground, the gently rolling sand hills, and then the tiny figures on the horizon – a photographer adjusting his camera on a tripod, and his posing subject.

White Sands National Monument © 2014 Bo Mackison

White Sands National Monument attracts a fair number of sledders.

The gift shop at the park headquarters even sells the round discs for sledding. So it seemed appropriate, as part of capturing the park’s overall feel, that I include a photograph of the visitors who came to the desert for a sled ride.

Rabbitbrush in White Sand © 2014 Bo Mackison

And a final photograph, a bit of the hardy vegetation that grows in one of the more hostile climates in the world.

Not many plants thrive with little rainfall, constant wind and creeping sands, drastic changes in temperatures of day and night, scorching sun and intense heat in the summer, and a soil that has minimal nutrients. The rabbitbrush and dune grasses are highly adapted plants that live where few plants can.

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Area – An Arid Grassland

Buenos Aires Grassland © 2012 Bo Mackison

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona is 118,000 acres of grassland, mountain ranges in the background, riparian corridors rippling through the land. The habitat, a semi-arid grassland, is land of the masked bobwhite quail and pronghorn antelope, both of which are being re-introduced in the region. Grasses once filled the Altar Valley, and are now maintained and restored by prescribed burns.

Grasses © 2012 Bo Mackison

In the 1800s, Altar valley was open grassland. Pronghorns had free range, falcons and hawks filled the air with their swooping, gliding, and soaring.  Mexican wolves, black bears and jaguars roamed in the grasses, traveling the corridors between the mountain ranges.

Poppies in the Grasslands © 2012 Bo Mackison

Then the Valley began filling with small towns and ranches in the 1860s, and the delicate balance maintaining the ecosystems gradually suffered. As ranchers expanded and grazing bared much the grasslands and exposed the land to the monsoon rains, erosion of the barren soils quickly followed.

With the grass gone and natural fires suppressed, mesquite gained a foothold. The grassland no longer supported the masked bobwhite quail or aplomado falcon. Pronghorn, wolves, bear, and jaguar were hunted or trapped.  Lehmann’s lovegrass, a non-Native grass, was introduced in the 1970s to help stop erosion. But this poor substitute for native grasses and now considered an invasive species, did nothing of benefit.

Spring in Arivaca Cienega © 2012 Bo Mackison

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1982 to re-establish the grasslands habitat and protect the Arivaca Cienga* and the Arivaca Creek and its watershed, and important resource for the several hundreds of kinds of birds that either live in the region, migrate through, or winter over.

The area is again lush with grasses. The wildflowers are abundant — Mexican poppies turn areas golden with bright color, purple bunches of Verbena add contrast.

A beautiful place, an important resource to protect and preserve.

——

cienega   pronounced see-en-ay’-ga.  spanish, A cienega usually is a wet, marshy area at the foot of a mountain or on the edge of a grassland where below ground water bubbles to the surface.

Sonoran Desert

Saguaro National Park © 2012 Bo Mackison

The Sonoran Desert covers approximately 100,000 square miles and includes the southern half of Arizona, southeastern California, most of the Baja California peninsula, the islands of the Gulf of California, and much of the state of Sonora, Mexico.

It is lush in comparison to most other deserts. Two visually dominant life forms of plants distinguish the Sonoran Desert from the other North American deserts: legume trees and columnar cacti. It also supports many other life forms encompassing a rich spectrum of some 2,000 species of plants.

Spring in the Sonoran Desert © 2012 Bo Mackison

The amount and seasonality of rainfall are defining characteristics of the Sonoran Desert. Much of the area has a two season rainfall pattern, though even during the rainy seasons most days are sunny. From December to March, storms from the North Pacific Ocean occasionally bring widespread, gentle rain to the northwestern areas. From July to mid-September, the summer monsoon brings surges of wet tropical air and frequent, but localized violent thunderstorms.

Desert Dusk © 2012 Bo Mackison

The Sonoran Desert differs from the other major North American Deserts (Mojave, Chihuahuan, and Great Basin) in that it has mild winters; most of the area rarely experiences frost. About half of the biota is tropical in origin, with life cycles attuned to the brief summer rainy season.