Spring in the Distance
by Bruce Nutting
Title
Spring in the Distance
Artist
Bruce Nutting
Medium
Painting - Digital
Description
The Great Basin Desert is the largest US desert[citation needed] and covers 190,000 square miles (490,000 km2). It is bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the west and the Rocky Mountains on the east, the Columbia Plateau to the north and the Mojave and Sonoran deserts to the south. The Great Basin Desert, unlike the Mojave or Sonora deserts, characteristically "lacks creosote bush" as defined by J. Robert Macey in a 1986 report distinguishing between "Great Basin scrub desert" and "creosote bush desert." Rainfall within the Great Basin Desert region varies from seven to twelve inches per year. The Great Basin Desert includes several arid basins lacking Larrea tridentata (chaparral) such as the "Chalfant, Hammil, Benton, and Queen valleys," as well as all but the southeast portion of the Owens Valley. Conversely, the "Panamint, Saline, and Eureka valleys" have creosote bush, unlike the Deep Springs Valley which includes part of the Great Basin scrub desert.
The Great Basin Desert is a cold desert caused by the rain shadow effect from the Sierra Nevada to the west. The predominant flora are "continuous shadscale and…sagebrush."
The ecotone demarcating the north of the Mojave Desert is the edge of creosote bush habitat and is also the south demarcation of the Great Basin shrub steppe and Central Basin and Range ecoregions. The ecotone is established by elevation increase, temperature decrease at higher elevations, and rainfall (less rain shadow at higher latitudes).
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May 26th, 2015
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