II. DESERT SOILS
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ricegrass, and cheatgrass (Bromus tactorum) grow most abundantly. Large
areas of the Gray Desert soils of the Columbia Basin support a luxurious
irrigated agriculture. Wheat and other grain crops grow in alternate years
of fallow without irrigation on the desert fringes of Brown, Chernozem, and
Prairie soils. In the northern irrigated desert, winters are cold, allowing only
one crop per season as compared with double season cropping in the
southern irrigated red desert soils. The Columbia Basin soils are deep, well
drained and medium to coarse textured. Desert soils form on loess (windblown deposits) that cover much of the Columbia Basin of basalt and
coarse glacial outwash. Again, only limited acreage is occupied by sodic,
salic, dune sand, or thin, rocky soils as compared with some of the harsher
deserts of the world.
X. Concluding Statement
The desert brings out mixed emotions in people. To the contained eye
it is desolate, romantic, or beautiful. And the "desert rat" finds it commandingly fascinating. More and more people are discovering a new life
in an exciting environment, while the sick, with pain-wracked joints, end
their wanderings and literally "take up their beds and walk" in the comforting radiations of the sun and dry air. Residents revel in the clarity of
nature with its clean rock, clear air, colorful mountains, broad plains, deep
gorges, and sand and soil—soil that blankets great distances in reds and
grays or is encrusted in depressions with salts, lime, gypsum, or is paved
with pebbles and varnished by nature's paint brush. Harsh physical geography is contrasted with bright green patchwork of lush crops under irrigation—heavily laden with fruit, nuts, vegetables, melons, grain, and hay,
their roots nourished in rich soil. Gray, dry land and irrigated grass and
legume pastures graze sheep and cattle, scattered as far as the eye can
see where abundant sunlight, plants, good soil, temperature, and water are
combined to feed a world still partly starving.
The desert charm is derived in part from its appearance of desolation—to the untrained eye—that acts to disguise a responsive biology that
sleeps in the drought and heat of the sun only to awaken to seething activity of life with water. Desert soil is living, dynamic, and ever changing.
Though it seems to be shrouded in lifelessness, water from rain or irrigation sets into motion the intense mechanisms of life, proliferating their
basic unit—the cell. The center of this biological activity is the soil, which
Fig. 15. Water flows a long distance to wet the parched desert arid lands (Southwest
United States). Manley Photo.
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ricegrass, and cheatgrass (Bromus tactorum) grow most abundantly. Large
areas of the Gray Desert soils of the Columbia Basin support a luxurious
irrigated agriculture. Wheat and other grain crops grow in alternate years
of fallow without irrigation on the desert fringes of Brown, Chernozem, and
Prairie soils. In the northern irrigated desert, winters are cold, allowing only
one crop per season as compared with double season cropping in the
southern irrigated red desert soils. The Columbia Basin soils are deep, well
drained and medium to coarse textured. Desert soils form on loess (windblown deposits) that cover much of the Columbia Basin of basalt and
coarse glacial outwash. Again, only limited acreage is occupied by sodic,
salic, dune sand, or thin, rocky soils as compared with some of the harsher
deserts of the world.
X. Concluding Statement
The desert brings out mixed emotions in people. To the contained eye
it is desolate, romantic, or beautiful. And the "desert rat" finds it commandingly fascinating. More and more people are discovering a new life
in an exciting environment, while the sick, with pain-wracked joints, end
their wanderings and literally "take up their beds and walk" in the comforting radiations of the sun and dry air. Residents revel in the clarity of
nature with its clean rock, clear air, colorful mountains, broad plains, deep
gorges, and sand and soil—soil that blankets great distances in reds and
grays or is encrusted in depressions with salts, lime, gypsum, or is paved
with pebbles and varnished by nature's paint brush. Harsh physical geography is contrasted with bright green patchwork of lush crops under irrigation—heavily laden with fruit, nuts, vegetables, melons, grain, and hay,
their roots nourished in rich soil. Gray, dry land and irrigated grass and
legume pastures graze sheep and cattle, scattered as far as the eye can
see where abundant sunlight, plants, good soil, temperature, and water are
combined to feed a world still partly starving.
The desert charm is derived in part from its appearance of desolation—to the untrained eye—that acts to disguise a responsive biology that
sleeps in the drought and heat of the sun only to awaken to seething activity of life with water. Desert soil is living, dynamic, and ever changing.
Though it seems to be shrouded in lifelessness, water from rain or irrigation sets into motion the intense mechanisms of life, proliferating their
basic unit—the cell. The center of this biological activity is the soil, which
Fig. 15. Water flows a long distance to wet the parched desert arid lands (Southwest
United States). Manley Photo.