Soil Temperature in the Mojave and Lower Colorado Deserts of California and Nevada.

Unlike some soil classification systems, Soil Taxonomy incorporates dynamic soil properties such as soil temperature and moisture. Both are time-consuming and difficult to monitor regularly, but have ecological and pedological importance. Neither are regularly measured, and are instead usually predicted from air temperature or elevation. Beginning in 2000, the Victorville MLRA Soil Survey Office began monitoring soil temperature at numerous sites throughout the Mojave and Lower Colorado Deserts (i.e. MLRA 30 and 31) in an effort to model the geographic distribution of soil temperature as a function of elevation and aspect. Recently we developed a digital soil map of soil temperature for MLRA 30 and 31 using multiple linear regression. The results show that the Mojave Desert is 54 percent thermic, 44 percent hyperthermic, and 2 percent mesic. The strongest predictors were air temperature, precipitation, solar radiation and albedo. In the future we expect this digital soil map, and any iteration, to serve as a reference for any future work concerning soils and ecological sites within California and Nevada.