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Sonoran Desert Summer
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Book Synopsis Sonoran Desert Summer by : John Alcock
Download or read book Sonoran Desert Summer written by John Alcock and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What could seem less inviting than summer in the desert? For most people, this prospect conjures up the image of relentless heat and parched earth; for biologist John Alcock, summer in Arizona's Sonoran Desert represents an opportunity to investigate the wide variety of life that flourishes in one of the most extreme environments in North America. "Only very special plants and animals can survive and reproduce in a place that may receive as little as six inches of rain in a year," observes Alcock, "a place where the temperature may rise above one hundred degrees each day for months on end." Yet he and other biologists have discovered here startling signs of life hidden in plain view under the summer sun: - male digger bees compete to reach virgins underground during the early summer mating season; - the round-tailed ground squirrel goes about its business, sounding alarm calls when danger threatens its kin; - the big-jawed beetles Dendrobias mandibularis emerge in time to feast on saguaro fruits and to use their mandibles on rival males as well; - Harris's hawks congregate in groups, showing their affinity for polyandry and communal hunting; - robberflies mimic the appearance of the bees and wasps on which they prey; - and peccaries reveal the adaptation of their reproductive cycle to the desert's seasonal rains. The book's 38 chapters introduce readers to these and other desert animals and plants, tracing the course of the season through activities as vibrant as mating rituals and as subtle as the gradual deterioration of a fallen saguaro cactus. Enhanced by the line drawings of Marilyn Hoff Stewart, Sonoran Desert Summer is both an account of how modern biology operates and a celebration of the beauty and diversity that can be found in even the most unpromising places.
Book Synopsis A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert by : Steven J. Phillips
Download or read book A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert written by Steven J. Phillips and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.
Book Synopsis When the Rains Come by : John Alcock
Download or read book When the Rains Come written by John Alcock and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life in the desert is a waiting game: waiting for rain. And in a year of drought, the stakes are especially high. John Alcock knows the Sonoran Desert better than just about anyone else, and in this book he tracks the changes he observes in plant and animal life over the course of a drought year. Combining scientific knowledge with years of exploring the desert, he describes the variety of ways in which the wait for rain takes placeÑand what happens when it finally comes. The desert is a land of five seasons, featuring two summersÑhot, dry months followed by monsoonÑand Alcock looks at the changes that take place in an entire desert community over the course of all five. He describes what he finds on hikes in the Usery Mountains near Phoenix, where he has studied desert life over three decades and where frequent visits have enabled him to notice effects of seasonal variation that might escape a casual glance. Blending a personal perspective with field observation, Alcock shows how desert ecology depends entirely on rainfall. He touches on a wide range of topics concerning the desertÕs natural history, noting the response of saguaro flowers to heat and the habits of predators, whether soaring red-tailed hawk or tiny horned lizard. He also describes unusual aspects of insects that few desert hikers will have noticed, such as the disruptive color pattern of certain grasshoppers that is more effective than most camouflage. When the Rains Come is brimming with new insights into the desert, from the mating behaviors of insects to urban sprawl, and features photographs that document changes in the landscape as drought years come and go. It brings us the desert in the harshest of timesÑand shows that it is still teeming with life.
Book Synopsis No Species Is an Island by : Theodore H. Fleming
Download or read book No Species Is an Island written by Theodore H. Fleming and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the darkness of the star-studded desert, bats and moths feed on the nectar of night-blooming cactus flowers. By day, birds and bees do the same, taking to blooms for their sweet sustenance. In return these special creatures pollinate the equally intriguing plants in an ecological circle of sustainability. The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world. Four species of columnar cacti, including the iconic saguaro and organ pipe, are among its most conspicuous plants. No Species Is an Island describes Theodore H. Fleming’s eleven-year study of the pollination biology of these species at a site he named Tortilla Flats in Sonora, Mexico, near Kino Bay. Now Fleming shares the surprising results of his intriguing work. Among the novel findings are one of the world’s rarest plant-breeding systems in a giant cactus; the ability of the organ pipe cactus to produce fruit with another species’ pollen; the highly specialized moth-cactus pollination system of the senita cactus; and the amazing lifestyle of the lesser long-nosed bat, the major nocturnal pollinator of three of these species. These discoveries serve as a primer on how to conduct ecological research, and they offer important conservation lessons for us all. Fleming highlights the preciousness of the ecological web of our planet—Tortilla Flats is a place where cacti and migratory bats and birds connect such far-flung habitats as Mexico’s tropical dry forest, the Sonoran Desert, and the temperate rain forests of southeastern Alaska. Fleming offers an insightful look at how field ecologists work and at the often big surprises that come from looking carefully at a natural world where no species stands alone.
Book Synopsis Physiological Ecology of North American Desert Plants by : Stanley D. Smith
Download or read book Physiological Ecology of North American Desert Plants written by Stanley D. Smith and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following a description of the physical and biological characterization of the four North American deserts together with the primary adaptations of plants to environmental stress, the authors go on to present case studies of key species. They provide an up-to-date and comprehensive review of the major patterns of adaptation in desert plants, with one chapter devoted to several important exotic plants that have invaded these deserts. The whole is rounded off with a synthesis of the resource requirements of desert plants and how they may respond to global climate change.
Book Synopsis The Saguaro Cactus by : David Yetman
Download or read book The Saguaro Cactus written by David Yetman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The saguaro, with its great size and characteristic shape—its arms stretching heavenward, its silhouette often resembling a human—has become the emblem of the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. The largest and tallest cactus in the United States, it is both familiar and an object of fascination and curiosity. This book offers a complete natural history of this enduring and iconic desert plant. Gathering everything from the saguaro’s role in Sonoran Desert ecology to its adaptations to the desert climate and its sacred place in Indigenous culture, this book shares precolonial through current scientific findings. The saguaro is charismatic and readily accessible but also decidedly different from other desert flora. The essays in this book bear witness to our ongoing fascination with the great cactus and the plant’s unusual characteristics, covering the saguaro’s: history of discovery, place in the cactus family, ecology, anatomy and physiology, genetics, and ethnobotany. The Saguaro Cactus offers testimony to the cactus’s prominence as a symbol, the perceptions it inspires, its role in human society, and its importance in desert ecology.
Book Synopsis Hidden Life of the Desert by : Thomas Alan Wiewandt
Download or read book Hidden Life of the Desert written by Thomas Alan Wiewandt and published by Mountain Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes a photographic tour of the life cycles of the desert, where all creatures must adapt to extremes of heat and cold and the coming and going of the rains.
Book Synopsis A Desert Feast by : Carolyn Niethammer
Download or read book A Desert Feast written by Carolyn Niethammer and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on thousands of years of foodways, Tucson cuisine blends the influences of Indigenous, Mexican, mission-era Mediterranean, and ranch-style cowboy food traditions. This book offers a food pilgrimage, where stories and recipes demonstrate why the desert city of Tucson became American’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy. Both family supper tables and the city’s trendiest restaurants feature native desert plants and innovative dishes incorporating ancient agricultural staples. Award-winning writer Carolyn Niethammer deliciously shows how the Sonoran Desert’s first farmers grew tasty crops that continue to influence Tucson menus and how the arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, Spanish soldiers, and Chinese farmers influenced what Tucsonans ate. White Sonora wheat, tepary beans, and criollo cattle steaks make Tucson’s cuisine unique. In A Desert Feast, you’ll see pictures of kids learning to grow food at school, and you’ll meet the farmers, small-scale food entrepreneurs, and chefs who are dedicated to growing and using heritage foods. It’s fair to say, “Tucson tastes like nowhere else.”
Book Synopsis Sonoran Desert Seasons by : Laura Appleton-Smith
Download or read book Sonoran Desert Seasons written by Laura Appleton-Smith and published by Books To Remember. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synopsis: A description of the seasons of summer, fall, winter, and spring in the Sonoran Desert, with a focuson animal and plant life.Target Letter-Sound Correspondences: Variant vowel /ô/ sound spelled au, aw.
Download or read book Blue Desert written by Charles Bowden and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1988-04-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains essays that depict and decry the rapid growth and disappearing natural landscapes of the Sunbelt
Book Synopsis A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert by : Patricia Wentworth Comus
Download or read book A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert written by Patricia Wentworth Comus and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region varies dramatically from parched desert lowlands to semiarid tropical forests and frigid subalpine meadows... "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert" takes readers deep into its vast expanse, looking closely at the relationships of plants and animals with the land and people, through time and across landscapes"--
Download or read book Desert Summer written by Michael Craft and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first year in academia ends with a bang-up summer session for theater-director-turned-professor Claire Gray with a new production, a new love, and a dead body. Claire, a former Broadway director and now head of the Theater Department of Desert Arts College in Palm Springs, is running her summer workshop for the first time. The play she will direct is a staged version of the film Rebecca, and playing the female lead is Paige Yeats, daughter of the college’s founder and president, D. Glenn Yeats. While rehearsals for the play go well, not everything else does. Yeats’s second ex-wife, Felicia, storms into town and makes demands for a Santa Barbara home she received as part of the divorce settlement. When she is discovered poisoned in her hotel room, the real show begins as Claire must wade through a long cast of suspects to find her murderer.
Book Synopsis The Desert Smells Like Rain by : Gary Paul Nabhan
Download or read book The Desert Smells Like Rain written by Gary Paul Nabhan and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Organ Pipe Cactus by : David Yetman
Download or read book The Organ Pipe Cactus written by David Yetman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished by its slender vertical branches, which resemble the tubes of a pipe organ, and growing to the imposing height of 15 to more than 30 feet, itÕs obvious how the organ pipe cactus got its name. In the United States, these spectacular and intriguing plants are found exclusively in a small area of the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern corner of Arizona. With a landscape marked by sharp, rocky slopes and daytime highs in the summer reaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the region is inhospitable for most ordinary life, whether plant or animal. But the organ pipe cactus is far from ordinary. Although it is the most common columnar cactus, it is so unusual in the United States that it is only one of three cacti to have a national preserve established to protect it. In this regard, it joins a select group of plantsÑincluding Joshua trees, redwoods, and sequoiasÑupon which that honor has been conferred. In this beautifully illustrated, large-format book, David Yetman provides an in-depth and comprehensive look at these intriguing and picturesque plants that most Americans will never have the opportunity to see. Chapters explore their ethnobotanical uses, their habitat, their distribution, and special conditions required for their germination, establishment, growth, and survival. Yetman also places the organ pipe in perspective as a member of a genus with at least twenty-three species, ranging from the prostrate Stenocereus eruca of Baja California to the 50-foot high giant S. chacalapensis of the coast of Oaxaca.
Book Synopsis Summer Moon by : Jean Craighead George
Download or read book Summer Moon written by Jean Craighead George and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2002-02-05 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a journey through the spring season as experienced by a fox pup, a wild piglet, and a young mountain lion.
Book Synopsis Physiological Ecology of North American Plant Communities by : Brain F. Chabot
Download or read book Physiological Ecology of North American Plant Communities written by Brain F. Chabot and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although, as W.D. Billings notes in his chapter in this book. the development of physiological ecology can be traced back to the very beginnings of the study of ecology it is clear that the modern development of this field in North America is due in the large part to the efforts of Billings alone. The foundation that Billings laid in the late 1950s came from his own studies on deserts and subsequently arctic and alpine plants, and also from his enormous success in instilling enthusiasm for the field in the numerous students attracted to the plant ecology program at Duke University. Billings' own studies provided the model for subsequent work in this field. Physiological techniques. normally confined to the laboratory. were brought into the field to examine processes under natural environmental conditions. These field studies were accompanied by experiments under controlled conditions where the relative impact of various factors could be assessed and further where genetic as opposed to environmental influences could be separated. This blending of field and laboratory approaches promoted the design of experiments which were of direct relevance to understanding the distribution and abundance of plants in nature. Physiological mechanisms were studied and assessed in the context of the functioning of plants under natural conditions rather than as an end in itself.
Book Synopsis Dead in Their Tracks by : John Annerino
Download or read book Dead in Their Tracks written by John Annerino and published by . This book was released on 2009-02-27 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is America’s killing field, and the deaths keep mounting. As the political debate has intensified and demonstrators have taken to the streets, more and more illegal border-crossers die trying to cross the desert on their way to what they hope will be a better life. The Arizona border is the deadliest immigrant trail in America today. For the strong and the lucky, the trail ends at a pick-up on an Interstate highway. For far too many others, it ends terribly—too often violently—not far from where they began. Dead in Their Tracks is a first hand account of the perils associated with crossing the desert on foot. John Annerino recounts his experience making that trek with four illegal immigrants—and his return trips to document the struggles of those who persist in this treacherous journey. In this spellbinding narrative, he takes readers into the “empty quarter” of the Southwest to meet the migrant workers and drug runners, the ranchers and Border Patrol agents, who populate today’s headlines. Other writers have documented the deaths; few have invited readers to share the experience as Annerino does. His feel for the land and his knowledge of surviving in the wilderness combine to make his account every bit as harrowing as it is for the people who risk it every day, and in increasing numbers. Each book includes an In Memorium card recognizing an immigrant, refugee, border agent, local, or humanitarian who has died in America's borderlands." The desert may seem changeless, but there are more bodies now, and Annerino has revised his original text to record some of the compelling stories that have come to light since the book’s first publication and has updated the photographs and written a new introduction and afterword. Dead in Their Tracks is now more timely than ever—and essential reading for the ongoing debate over illegal immigration. For information on First Serial Rights, Book Club, Film, Television, & Options, visit the Author's Web site.
