#pinyon-juniper

[allisondoesthings]

My first published paper!

Please check out my first published paper contribution! I was involved with the field work portion of this study as part of my master's degree in geography at the University of Utah. It's always exciting to expand my knowledge of geospatial technologies and evolve in the world of environmental science.

[desert-oracle]

THE BLUE CROW

Destruction of High Desert forest on public land has led to a 78% drop in pinyon jay populations over the past 50 years. The pinyon jay is the steward of the pinyon forests, for which the forest feeds and houses this crucial blue crow. Of the thousands of pinyon nuts the blue crow puts away for the winter, usually working with its mate and both returning to the spot throughout the year to store…

[itsadragonaesthetic]

Currently feeling VERY thankful for sites like eBird and iNaturalist. Need a comprehensive map of pinyon-juniper woodlands in Arizona? There it is. Need an area-specific checklist? Or a bar chart? THERE IT IS. My life is so much easier because of citizen science projects. I'm not even officially researching anything.

[best-sharks-bracket]

ok it’s pretty much the very opposite of the ocean but I would like to raise awareness of a really cool biome!

The piñon juniper woodland is a desert-like environment and covers about 15% of the western US and occurs between 4,500 and 7,500 feet in elevation! This biome consists of some ground cover, scrubby piñon trees and juniper trees, which are usually not much taller than 10 feet! This biome also occurs in close proximity to Joshua trees which are an endangered species endemic to the southwest US. A lot of different species call this habitat home, including tumbleweeds (which are native to Ukraine!), the endangered pinyon jay, reptiles, great horned owls, and many species of cactus! The piñon juniper woodland doesn’t really get much coverage and is threatened by climate change especially wildfires and many species are declining in population. This environment has a lot of cultural significance to the native people and is an important habitat in the American west. I hope this silly little post has helped raise some awareness of this beautiful biome! here’s a picture I took in Arizona in a piñon juniper woodland at about 5000 feet of elevation

Resources to learn more :

(x,x,x)

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay

Photo: Ryan Mandelbaum

"Until recently, this jay of the Interior West was considered part of the same species as the California Scrub-Jay; the two were officially 'split' in July 2016. Unlike its California cousin, Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay is mostly an uncommon bird, living in sparse woodlands of juniper and pinyon pine in arid foothills, but it does come into suburbs of some western cities. Its name honors Samuel W. Woodhouse, a doctor and naturalist who accompanied expeditions to the Southwest between 1849 and 1852 and wrote about his experiences."

- Audubon Field Guide

[proton-wobbler]

Gray Vireo

[image ID: a drab songbird, with a gray head and white eyering surrounding a dark eye. the bill is blue-gray. the throat and belly are white. end ID]

Song:

Scientific Name: Vireo vicinior

IUCN Rating: Least Concern

Habitat & Location: found in pinyon-juniper, mesquite and oak scrub, and chaparral of the Southwest; overwinter in Sonora and Baja California Sur and a portion of western Texas

Fun Fact: Overwintering birds sometimes pair up and guard a territory, which is unusual for migrating birds

[image ID: a map of the Southwest United States and northern Mexico. colored red, which denotes breeding range, is a portion of the 4-corners, with most of that area in Arizona and New Mexico. other red portions are literal spots in California, Baja California, and Coahuila. the blue portion, denoting overwintering range, is in southern Arizona, Sonora, and Baja California Sur. there is a portion in Texas near Big Bend which is colored purple to show year-round residence. there is also a portion of blue to the west and a strip of red to the east near this section. end ID]

Image Sources: bird (Phil Chaon); map (birds of the world)

[typhlonectes]

Breeding birds of high-elevation mixed-conifer forests have declined in national parks of the southwestern U.S. while lower-elevation species have increased, with responses to drought varying by habitat 

Harrison H Jones, Chris Ray, Matthew Johnson, Rodney Siegel

Abstract

Climate change is considered a major driver of recent avian population declines, particularly in the drought-stricken southwestern United States. Predicting how bird populations will respond requires understanding the climatic drivers influencing population density across the region’s diverse habitats. We modelled breeding-season densities of 50 bird species in relation to spring and summer drought and the timing of North American monsoon rainfall over a 12-year period (2007–2018) and across 4 habitats comprising an approximately 1,500 m elevational gradient. We estimated annual breeding-season population density in relation to climate in the previous year by fitting a Bayesian hierarchical N-mixture model to point-count data from each of 6 national parks on the Colorado Plateau. Specifically, we asked whether: (1) population trends were stable, increasing, or decreasing in the focal parks; (2) breeding densities were affected by drought or the timing of monsoon rains; and (3) climatic effects differed across habitat types and among species that molt on the breeding grounds, the nonbreeding grounds, or stopover to molt in the monsoon region of northwestern Mexico (molt migrants). Population trends varied with habitat. Species of high-elevation mixed-conifer forest declined over the study period, matching regional Breeding Bird Survey trends, likely in response to climate-related habitat loss and disturbance. By contrast, lower-elevation pinyon-juniper and grassland-shrubland species density generally increased. Effects of drought varied by habitat with elevation: mixed-conifer species responded positively to drought in the previous year, likely due to earlier snowmelt and breeding phenology, whereas pinyon-juniper species were unaffected, and grassland-shrubland species responded negatively, perhaps due to reduced nest survival. Later arrival of monsoon rains, a common prediction of climate models, had a positive effect on grassland bird densities, but a negative effect on molt-migrant densities. Late monsoon rains may result in a phenological mismatch between migration timing and the pulse of resources required to molt.

Read the paper here:

Breeding birds of high-elevation mixed-conifer forests have declined in national parks of the southwestern U.S. while lower-elevation species have increased, with responses to drought varying by habitat | Ornithological Applications | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

[leopardmask-ao3]

hi! haven't talked for a bit, just wanted to say <3

also, bit of an ask gamey prompt:

if you were to add something to minecraft (or change something), anything at all, what would it be?

<3!!

Gosh... There are a few things, but the first thing that comes to mind is an in-depth badlands biome update! I live very close to the area of the world that the badlands biomes are based on (there are more parts of the world that look like that, but I thiiiink they're based mostly on the American southwest?) and compared to that, Minecraft badlands are... well. Please, PLEASE change the foliage color, for one thing, I PROMISE green things exist here. Nothing is that weird gross muddy brown. Even savanna-like color would be better, but ideally maybe a sage-y green? There's lots of sage around. Also, wild juniper trees and possibly "spruce" (pinyon pine, but I'd be fine with just using spruce b/c Minecraft can't have Every biodiversity ever) instead of oak trees. Junipers are soooo cool. And as a bonus it could be a grey plank type!

There's some other things that would be cool to add to a badlands update, like some sort of Mesa Verde-type ruin structure (and maybe sus red sand to go with it?) and the stuff in the biome vote videos, the prickly pear and vultures. But the main thing I want is just to see things that do IRL red-rock biomes the justice they deserve.

[lupinuslepidus]

one last note about mt. charleston: felt a lot of juniper emotions. they co-occur with pinyon pines, so we've been seeing them everywhere, but the ones we had up there were particularly gorgeous.

[rabbitcruiser]

Buck Canyon Overlook, Canyonlands National Park (No. 4)

Canyonlands National Park contains a wide variety of plant life, including 11 cactus species, 20 moss species, liverworts, grasses and wildflowers. Varieties of trees include netleaf hackberry, Russian olive, Utah juniper, pinyon pine, tamarisk and Fremont's cottonwood. Shrubs include Mormon tea, blackbrush, four-wing saltbush and cliffrose.

Cryptobiotic soil is the foundation of life in Canyonlands, providing nitrogen fixation and moisture for plant seeds. One footprint can destroy decades of growth.

​Source: Wikipedia

[ghostoffuturespast]

Nature Ask Meme; 7:What's your favorite bird song or call?, 30:What is your ideal weather? and 47: What is your favorite species of tree?

Nature Ask Meme Here

7. What’s your favorite bird song or call?

Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)

I’m pretty horrible at recognizing bird calls but one of my favorites is the Western Meadowlark. Very common bird that we have out here on the short grass prairie but this is one of the first birds to return in the spring. So after a long dreary winter, the songs of the Western Meadowlark let me know when the prairie is waking up.

30. What is your ideal weather?

65 fahrenheit (18 celsius) and sunny or raining all day. Colorado likes to brag about how much fucking sunshine we get, which is a lot, but sometimes I just want an excuse to curl up on my couch and not leave the house. Due to our climate, full days of rain are actually rare here.

47. What is your favorite species of tree?

Utah Juniper (Juniperus ostesperma)

I mentioned Bristlecone Pine in a different ask, but another tree I also love is Utah Juniper. It’s one the distinguishing species in the pinyon-juniper woodland ecosystems that are found throughout the SW United States. While junipers and pine trees are related and are both members of the class conifers, junipers are in the cypress family and are close cousins of the redwoods. I love Utah Junipers in particular because they also grow in the most random ass places in some of the wildest configurations. The trunks of these trees are beautiful; sublimely twisted and textured, and I love how gnarled they get. I’ve literally seen these trees cracking boulders in half and growing out of cliff walls. 

Most people have probably heard of juniper berries, and you might be familiar with it’s use as a flavoring for gin, but those “berries” aren’t fruits at all. They’re a specialized type of seed cone with very close-knit scales that gives it the cones the appearance of a berry.

[1ore]

me and the word stewardship have such a funny relationship because, despite being raised culturally white and ~christian, it is a word i was introduced to exclusively through video games and environmentalism. so my mental image of the words "environmental stewardship" is like. being the vassal of thy lord the pinyon-juniper forest. being a shieldmaiden to a couple of saguaros. being some kind of glochid-encrusted squire. which is very funny but absolutely not a shared understanding

[desert-oracle]

EPISODE #215: AMONG THE STATELY TREES

Where’s the beautiful part, anyway? Well, start by walking about a mile past the last parking lot or dirt road or residential car-parts dump or informal halfway house or accidental pit-bull breeding farm, and keep going in the direction of the difficult terrain: the hills and the mountains and the boulders. Not the hills covered in radio relay towers, but the ones with nothing up there at all,…

[incendiorum]

on the eve of your own murder, you wake, alone. you came back for revenge.

in 283 CE, the universe doesn't spin the way it should have. a man does not die, but he is, in one fell move, usurped. betrayed, he and his lover are forced to run. and run they do. into the carpathians and north, north, north and back again. when the new world is the thing in everyone's mouth, they make the journey west. and west is where they are, inevitably, caught.

for a long time, they make it and make it well. for a long time, it seems like they've finally shaken the hounds on their scent trail. the lawlessness of the dry west is sweet as molasses. canyonlands and mountain ranges tall enough to scrape the sky and just as good to vanish into. dead or alive posters are an allure. when one can't make the kill, the other can. and between them both they have the funds to live a good life. it's when they settle down, amongst pinyon and juniper, that real life catches up to them.

the universe turns right, this time. lucius inevitably dies. but this time iovita dies with him. bloody and awful and sobbing. and... only one of them comes back.

resurrected, iovita dedicates their life to revenge. tracking down each and every hound that ever dared to scent their trail or speak their name. they're the cruel god of the west, a desert vagabond with nothing to their name except for a mean red mare and an even meaner temper themself. stories follow them like flies to deathly miasma. that sometimes, if you're alone at night, a stranger will show and ask to share your fire. deny them, and you're soon for death at nature's hands. allow them, and they'll tell you stories to shake you down to your bones. and if you tell them valuable information about the people they seek, they'll reward you with something grand. something you desire above all else.

dead man walking. woman in white. a riderless horse and a ridge full of patient vultures. your lack of hospitality on the range will be treated accordingly.

[plethoraworldatlas]

 The Nevada Department of Wildlife has announced that it detected three animals thought to be wolves in northern Elko County. This is the first time that wolves have been documented in Nevada since 2016.

“I’m so happy to welcome wolves back to the Silver State where they belong,” said Amaroq Weiss, a senior wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Wolves are a vital part of healthy mountain ecosystems in the West, and there’s plenty of room for them to thrive in Nevada.”

The animals were first detected on March 17 by a helicopter crew that was contracted by the department to radio-collar moose. The crew reported its sighting to the department, which then coordinated with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a search plan. This led to a site visit by department staff, who discovered tracks, collected scat for DNA-testing and set out trail cameras.

The area where these wolves were detected is a mix of high desert sagebrush steppe and mountains forested in pinyon pine and juniper, with more mountainous forests at higher elevations. Northern Elko County is rich in ungulates like moose, elk, deer and pronghorns, which provide a food source for wolves.

At 2 to 3 years old, wolves typically disperse from the pack in which they’re born and set off to seek mates and territories of their own. They can wander hundreds of miles in this search.

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Black-throated Gray Warbler

Photo: Amado Demesa

"This strikingly patterned warbler is typical of semi-arid country in the West. It is often common in summer in the foothills, in open woods of juniper, pinyon pine, or oak, where its buzzy song carries well across the dry slopes. Of all the western warblers, this is the one that shows up most often in the East, but it is still rare enough there to provide excitement for eastern birders."

- Audubon Field Guide