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The Compost: For the love of the distressed desert

April 4, 2023

Welcome to The Compost, a weekly newsletter on key environmental news impacting Southern California. Subscribe now to get it in your inbox! In today’s edition…

Tesa Madsen-Hepp, an ecology doctoral student at UC Riverside, is sounding the alarm: Even our hardiest desert environments are transforming in alarming ways due to climate change.

I spent time over the weekend in that environment, as my husband and I continued an annual tradition of going on a scavenger hunt to track down all of the Desert X art installations that appear in the Coachella Valley each spring. Several of this year’s installations, which are on display through May 7, comment on climate change and how our planet is transforming. That includes the interactive exhibit Hylozoic/Desires in my photo above, by Himali Singh Soin of India and David Soin Tappeser of Germany, where poetic commentary and indigenous music wash over the sand as the area’s famous wind turbines spin in the background.

Just south of that spot, the Mojave Desert transitions into the Sonoran Desert, which is the hottest such climate in North America. If any place stands a chance at thriving through climate change, it’s here, right? That’s why the latest findings from Madsen-Hepp are so alarming.

“We tend to have this perspective that deserts are super resilient, ” she said. Instead, her team discovered pinyon and juniper pines, thought to be extremely heat and drought tolerant, have moved up in elevation over the past few decades — and still aren’t thriving. But they found less hardy shrubs, including ocotillo, also have moved down to take their place. If the planet keeps warming, and extreme times of drought and chaotic precipitation continue, Madsen-Hepp told me she fears what’s next will be nothing but barren land.

“Once they reach their threshold, there’s no other plant species we can just go in and plant and hope that they’ll take over and make that ecosystem flourish,” she said.

Some people already see these stretches of desert as wasteland. But visit now and that notion will be quickly pushed aside. Thanks to our wet winter, we saw blooming Joshua trees and cholla cacti. We saw bright yellow brittlebush and desert sunflowers and purple native verbena painting the sand this superbloom season.

One wet winter won’t reverse long-term trends, though, Madsen-Hepp cautioned. Her research shows the desert is responding primarily to rising temperatures, which show no sign of slowing down. So the only cure, she said, is to curb emissions to curtail climate change.

“I shouldn’t overlook the desert when thinking about climate impact,” Julie Babyar wrote on Twitter in response to the story.

Others who emailed me about the story were less convinced.

“Another piece about the ‘climate crisis.’ Perhaps treating your depression with a different psychologist?” one email read.

I’m increasingly encountering this narrative from climate change deniers that anyone who follows the science must be suffering from mental illness. Climate anxiety, of course, is very real, and my conversation with Madsen-Hepp was sobering. But standing in the desert this weekend, thinking about my article as I observed the work of artists Soin and Tappeser and the other Desert X artists, I didn’t feel depressed. I felt more inspired and motivated than ever to help save this special ecosystem that’s one of many reasons I love living in Southern California.

Ignorance may be bliss, but information is power. And I, for one, am feeling empowered.

— Brooke Staggs, environment reporter

HYDRATE

Record snowpack: The snowpack has gone from 35% of normal this time last year to 237% of normal this year, tying with 1952 as the biggest haul since official records began shortly before that. My family in Big Bear reported they were briefly getting more snow flurries Monday. Now we just need to hope for no early warm spells, to avoid major flooding risks… Our Bay Area colleague Scooty Nickerson has the tale. …READ MORE…

Key quote: “Once you get up above some level, you are mostly concerned with how fast it melts rather than how big is the snowpack.”

Fill ‘er up: ICYMI, our Monserrat Solis reported that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was refilling Diamond Valley Lake, its 810,000-acre-foot reservoir near Hemet, for the first time in three years. It had dropped to 60% of capacity during the drought. There also happens to be quite the superbloom happening near the lake, with a special wildflower trail now open. …READ MORE…

BREATHE

Carbon removal boom: “It effectively needs to be a wartime effort. The oil and gas infrastructure that currently exists out to the horizon needs to be replaced with carbon removal.” Here’s Laura Klivans with KQED on the potential for a carbon removal boom in California that could reduce warming and create jobs, though some are worried about unintended consequences. …READ MORE…

Dive deeper: Brian Kahn writes for Rolling Stone about a $925 million fund Silicon Valley companies have created to pull that carbon from the sky.

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PROTECT

Ditch the flush: Ladies, who’s still flushing period products? I talked with a director at Roundhouse Aquarium in Manhattan Beach who has made it a mission to raise awareness about how microplastics and chemicals in many products can harm marine life, and to push companies to do better. …READ MORE…

Most disturbing detail: Fish eat algae, which can absorb microplastics. We eat fish. So yes, bits of those flushed products might eventually end up inside of us.

Pit update: I told you last week about lawsuits looming over Newport Beach’s plan to deal with contaminated sediment that needs to be dredged from channels in Lower Newport Bay by burying it in an underwater pit at the heart of the harbor. It’s now official: the Orange County Coastkeeper has sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the project, arguing in a 33-page suit that the federal agency didn’t properly study how the pit might impact protected wildlife and what other mitigations and alternatives were possible.

Big park could get bigger: One of Southern California’s largest state parks may soon grow by another 842 acres if a ridgeline is purchased to keep housing off and protect wildlife. Our Steve Scauzillo has the tale. …READ MORE…

TRANSPORT

Green trucking gets green light: The Biden administration on Friday cleared the way for California’s plan to phase out a range of diesel-powered trucks. The EPA ruling will let California require manufacturers to sell an increasing number of zero-emission trucks in the next couple of decades to help the state reach emissions targets. Some observers are questioning whether the state grid is ready and are expressing concerns over the burden the transition will be on truckers and trucking companies. …READ MORE…

Speaking of green trucking…: The Long Beach City Council is slated to hold a public hearing tonight on whether to let a company demolish structures on lots on the west end of town and develop a green trucking and outdoor temporary container storage facility for trucks en route to the Port of Long Beach. While the project calls for features such as zero emission charge stations for onsite trucks, our Kristy Hutchings reports it has drawn opposition from at least one group over potential impacts on traffic and the environment. …READ MORE…

Get ’em while they last: The IRS lists more than three dozen electric or plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles made in North America that now are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit. But some won’t qualify or will get only half once new Treasury Department rules announced Friday take effect, the Associated Press reports. …READ MORE…

EQUITIZE

Uneven pollution: A new report showed that drought and extreme heat worsened air pollution for low-income and non-white communities throughout California, further degrading health in neighborhoods that have long struggled with environmental inequities. Dorany Pineda with the Los Angeles Times has the story. …READ MORE…

Key quote: “We have a tendency as a state and as a country to really outsource pollution based on needs that are occurring elsewhere.”

CELEBRATE

Thanks, Earth Day: Enjoy this column from our contributor Rececca K. O’Connor about how Earth Day recently helped her check off something that had been on her bucket list since she was 10 years old. …READ MORE…

Repair Cafe returns: Here’s a fun article on an important sustainability issue, as our contributor Anissa Rivera covers the return of the Pasadena-based Repair Cafe after a pandemic-related hiatus. People can bring damaged items to the pop-up event for free repair by volunteers who are working to end our throwaway mindset. …READ MORE…

Flowers bloom as Roxanne Bradley and Tom McDonnell hike through the new Saddleback Wilderness area in Orange, CA, on Monday, March 27, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

EXPLORE

Trails reopen: It was wild. Then it was a popular motocross course. Then it was closed to the public and allowed to become wild again. Now 3.3 miles of trails in a hilly area near Irvine Lake are open to the public again during special access events to protect the delicate ecosystem. Our Heather McCrea as the story. …READ MORE…

PITCH IN

Share Earth Day events: For this week’s tip on how Southern Californians can help the environment… Know about an Earth Day event happening anywhere in Southern California on or around April 22? Send the details my way to [email protected] so I can share a roundup in an upcoming issue of The Compost and hopefully generate more support for the work you all are doing to protect our corner of this wild and wonderful planet.

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