what you see before you
you see a barren wasteland
or do you see a stark landscape of beauty
what if i were to tell you this area was teeming with life
what if i were to tell you what plethora of stunning plant and animal life
lay hidden before you're very eyes
this area is them a hobby national preserve and it is currently threatened by human
driven pressure
my name is keep geddes
i'm a graduate students at in speech is a hobby here at the university of
california los angels
using a combination of ecological
remote sensing and genetic tools
i'm trying to help preserve them a hobby from ongoing threats to its survival
in order to know how speech is respond to a changing environment we must first
know more about the past history and current limits of speech is in this so
to explain how i in my colleagues are doing this we should start the base
and work our way up
and the hobby does there is one of four major us deserts
the hardest of the group much of them obvious commonly referred to as the high
desert as large areas light elevations greater than three thousand meters
the does it runs across three states occurring mostly within the california landscape
the total area of the desert is twenty two thousand square miles
is incredibly area receiving lesson thirteen inches of rain paul in italy
temperatures read the desert are very extreme going from below freezing in the winter and
resting well above one hundred twenty in the summer months
over the last twenty years all the southwest is observed a decline in rainfall
for the already irritable hobby this is disconcerting as multiple climate models predicted increasing the
error future for this area
additionally development in the desert is ever increasing
most of the natural water sources are already diverted to major towns
man's in fact has led to dramatic fragmentation in isolation of the once pristine area
in the face of this
with the assistance of collaborators at ucla in the national park service
over the last five years i have been studying the impact of climate and landscape
on the viability of representatives p c's within the model we doesn't
our study species is cackle acacia
a common software shrugged but has apache distribution normally restricted to dry washes
where previous rainfall has led to cindy stream back behind
the major characteristics of the species are representative of numerous other shrubs species in this
area
thus
understanding how it is affected in forms is about the response of the community as
a whole
what is now essential is an understanding of the current limitations of species to react
to these dramatic changes
with such rapid a measure occurring survival depends on maintaining existing populations
and the ability to move when habitat becomes altered were damaged
for plans this isn't as easy as speaking at your legs and moving
plants movie a seed and pond dispersal
thus observing their normal rates of movement is a bit tricky
having access to genetic tools helps to solve this problem
we can measure genetic differences between plants to estimate the degree to which their ancestors
have moved
and how landscape refinement have affected this movement or limited their reproduction
we do this by taking our data in displaying it on maps
looking at areas where we know are species as
we can plot out the dominant avenues of dispersal
by comparing those areas with lots of movement with those areas with very little
we can identify the dominant landscape features that facilitate or np dispersal
what we have found for cat clocky shows striking
this tree has a history of widespread movement
much of this has been dramatically affected by the surrounding climate
we find that movement through the harder areas is very limited
and at lower harder elevation acacia produces fewer scenes and thus moves less
this is troubling given the future of this area
if temperature in a ready to continue to rise cat claw and other species like
it or that depend on it will have an increasingly restricted range
as we have observed the history of widespread movement for this p c's this will
mean a dramatic shift
we continue to study this p c's to provide land managers with the best option
for curbing the effects of human driven environmental change
only through a joint effort of community action and scientific enquiry can we hope to
reserve the majestic beauty of areas like them harvey from our own actions