An independent publisher of web and print media. Printed ♻️ in the 🇺🇸.

Back Country Press logo

Cart

  • Classes
    • Arborist CEUs
  • Products
    • Books
    • Gift Card
    • Book Resources
    • Sale Items
    • Posters
    • ID Guides
    • Free Downloads
    • Hats
  • Authors
  • News
    • Podcast
  • About
    • Calendar
    • Vendor Sales
    • Newsletter
    • Scholarships
    • Find Our Books
  • My account
    • Orders
    • Downloads
    • Checkout
    • Lost Password
    • Login

California’s Deserts

November 15, 2022 by Backcountry Press Leave a Comment

California Desert Plants
California Desert Plants

Desert environments have always held a fascination for many, their stark landscapes notwithstanding. At first glance these seemingly-lifeless landscapes are actually home to hardy woody shrubs and succulents with amazing adaptations to survive in harsh desert conditions. In California’s deserts, all this changes when the onset of winter rains bring carpets of brightly colored annuals and flowering shrubs. California Desert Plants celebrates how elevation, climate, and vegetation define the Great Basin, Mojave, and Sonoran deserts in California. What follows is an excerpt from that book.

A diversity of wildflowers carpet the ground on the northern slope of Joshua Tree National Park near the
Fortynine Palms Oasis, March, 2019. Photo by Jesse Miller.

Desert Environments Around the World

Global distribution of warm and cold desert ecosystems. From California Desert Plants (2022, Backcountry Press)
Global distribution of warm and cold desert ecosystems.

When deserts come to mind, most of us think of a hot and dry landscape with little vegetation. However, there is no simple or all-encompassing definition of what constitutes a desert. Most will typically define deserts as regions that receive an average of less than ten inches of annual rainfall, producing arid conditions where rates of evaporation exceed the amount of rain. This rainfall limit is somewhat arbitrary, however. Average annual amounts of rainfall are characteristically variable in desert regions, with irregular years much higher than normal—interspersed with years, or sequences of years, with little rainfall.

Aridlands in California

More practically speaking, however, we tend to point to deserts as aridlands. A transition from the Transverse and Peninsular ranges is seen from west to east in southern California where the typical chaparral shrubland and woodland floras of the coast and foothills are replaced by species with a strong floristic relationships to the arid southwest. These desert species have adaptations to survive extended summer drought and include common shrubs such as creosote bush, burrobush, Joshua tree and various species of cacti, agaves, and mesquite. Areas of the southwestern San Joaquin Valley and inner Coast Ranges in southern California receive minimal rainfall that could be described as desert-like (4–6 inches per year) but are not generally mapped as desert because they lack the characteristic desert flora and fauna.

Montane chaparral in the San Gabriel Mountains on the north slopes, adjacent to the Mojave Desert. KAUFFMANN
California's Deserts
Cactus and succulent scrub east of the Providence Mountains, Mojave National Preserve. KAUFFMANN

California’s Deserts

California Deserts and North American Deserts
California Deserts and North American Deserts

North America has four major desert regions. The majority of the Mojave Desert lies within California, but only small portions of the Sonoran and Great Basin deserts are found here. The Mojave and Sonoran deserts, together with the Chihuahuan Desert of southern Texas and north-central Mexico, are warm deserts because of their mild winter conditions and presence of plants and animals with strong affinities to the arid subtropics. The Great Basin is a cold desert because of its higher elevations, more extreme winter conditions, and flora and fauna linkages to the north-temperate zones.

Great Basin Desert in California

The Great Basin forms a large geomorphic region that extends from east of the Sierra Nevada across Nevada and western Utah to the edge of the Rocky Mountains and north to the Columbia Plateau to include southeastern Oregon and southern Idaho. While the entire Great Basin covers a large area, only two small portions reach into California. The first California Great Basin to this book is east of the Sierra Nevada and north of the Mojave Desert, comprising the northern Owens Valley and higher elevations of the White, Inyo, Panamint, and adjacent mountain ranges. The second California Great Basin region is largely formed by the Modoc Plateau of northeastern California, a sparsely populated area of high desert plains and volcanic uplands with sagebrush steppe and pinyon-juniper woodlands.

A pinyon-juniper woodland in the Panamint Range within California's portion of the Great Basin Desert. Photo by Mark Bailey.
A pinyon-juniper woodland in the Panamint Range within California’s portion of the Great Basin Desert. Photo by Mark Bailey.

Mojave Desert in California

Succulent scrub in the Mojave Desert at sunrise. KAUFFMANN

The Mojave Desert is the smallest of the four North American desert regions. At 48,000 square miles, it is roughly the size of the state of New York. About 80 percent of the Mojave Desert lies in California extending beyond to cover portions of southern Nevada and small adjacent areas of southern Utah and northwestern Arizona. In a topographic sense, the Mojave Desert forms a transition between the higher and colder Great Basin Desert to its north and east and the warmer, lower elevation Sonoran Desert to its south and west. Valley basins in the Mojave Desert generally lie between 2,000–3,500 feet in elevation, although Death Valley is much lower. By comparison, Great Basin valleys are typical around 4,000 feet elevation and higher. Most valley basins in the Sonoran Desert within California have elevations below 1,300 feet, extending to below sea level in the Cahuilla Basin.

Sonoran Desert in California

Carrizo Badlands, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in the Sonoran Desert. Photo by Moe Donnelly.

The region of the Sonoran Desert in California forms a relatively small portion of the larger Sonoran Desert which extends across the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This California portion is distinguished not just by its political geography but also by a winter rainfall regime. This is in contrast to the summer and winter, or biseasonal, rainfall regime that characterizes other areas of the Sonoran Desert. Many books identify this California portion of the Sonoran Desert as the Colorado Desert, named after the Colorado River that forms its eastern margin. This terminology invariably causes confusion with the state of Colorado, although this area received the name before the state of Colorado was created. We thus refer to this area as California’s Sonoran Desert.


Learn more

  • California Desert Plants paperback
    California Desert Plants paperback
    $34.95
    Rated 5.00 out of 5 based on 3 customer ratings
    Add to cart
  • California Desert Plants eBook
    California Desert Plants eBook
    $18.95
    Add to cart
  • California Desert Plants paperback and eBook
    California Desert Plants paperback and eBook
    $44.95
    Rated 5.00 out of 5 based on 2 customer ratings
    Add to cart

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Filed Under: biogeography, Botanical Books, California Desert Plants Tagged With: Great Basin, Mojave, North American Deserts, Sonoran

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Events

  • 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm, May 30, 2025 – California Trees with Michael Kauffmann

Join Our Newsletter, get 10% off

* indicates required

Our most recent Podcast

Trivia Challenge: Wildflowers of the Klamath Mountains

https://backcountrypress.com/podcast-player/21109/trivia-challenge-wildflowers-of-the-klamath-mountains.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 19:11 | Recorded on July 8, 2022

Recent Posts

  • The Evolution of Trees of California: From Jepson to Today May 20, 2025
  • Mapping the Hidden Forest May 2, 2025
  • Discover California’s Native Trees: A Guide to the Arboreal Wonders of the Golden State April 26, 2025
  • Second Edition of Hiking Humboldt Volume 2 by Rees Hughes Now Available! March 2, 2025
  • Truffle Season in the Pacific Northwest February 10, 2025

Product tags

Botany California Cascadia Conifers Desert ecology ectotherms explorations field guide Fire Fire Ecology Forest pathogens Fungi Geology Hiking Hiking Guide Humboldt County Identification Card Invertebates Klamath Mountains Klamath Mountians Lassen Volcanic National Park Literature Mammals mushrooms Natural History Oregon Pacific Crest Trail pathogens Pines Plant Exploring Plants redwood forest Rivers road guide sea vegetables Seaweed Trees Trinity Alps Vernal Pools Washington wildflowers

RSS Follow Backcountry Press updates

  • Second Edition of Hiking Humboldt Volume 2 by Rees Hughes Now Available!
  • Truffle Season in the Pacific Northwest

GIft Card from BCP

bookstore

Subscribe to the Backcountry Press Blog

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 305 other subscribers

FREE shipping on orders of $75 or more. Dismiss

%d