Soil Climate Characterization Project: An Application for Monitoring Climate Change.

The Spring and Sheep Mountains are two of the most ecologically diverse ecosystems in the Mojave Desert biogeographic region, 24 species are endemic to the Spring Mountains alone. In 2004, the U.S. Forest Service in conjunction with the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service partnered with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the US Geological Service (USGS) to initiate a project to characterize the climate and soils across the ecological life-zones within the Spring and Sheep Mountains in Clark County, Nevada.  Understanding the dynamics of such diverse systems requires an understanding of the spatial and temporal interactions among climate, vegetation, and soil.

Climate stations were installed along an elevation transect across vegetative life zones ranging from Mojave Desert (Larrea tridentata/Ambrosia spp.) along the West side of the Spring Mountains to a closed-canopy bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) assemblage just below 10,000 feet in the Sheep Range of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.  Data collection began in 2007 and continues to present.  This study provides linkages useful in understanding desert ecology and pedology and provides a template for understanding soil moisture, evapotranspiration, solar radiation,  groundwater recharge modeling and plant dynamics over time.  The monitoring stations along the elevation transect currently are being added to a global network and will provide a basis for identifying change in ecological response to our changing climate.