The Mojave Bioregion -- An Overview

The Mojave Bioregion is one of California's largest bioregions and a desert showcase. The eastern boundary is contiguous with the borders of Nevada and Arizona. To the north and west, the Mojave borders the Sierra bioregion, and to the south, it is bounded by the South Coast and Colorado Desert bioregions.

Location, Cities, People

Seven counties make up the Mojave bioregion: nearly all of San Bernardino, most of Inyo, the southeastern tips of Mono and Tulare, the eastern end of Kern, northeastern desert area of Los Angeles, and a piece of northern-central Riverside County. The largest cities are Palmdale -- one of California's fastest-growing communities -- Victorville, Hesperia, Ridgecrest, and Barstow. The Mojave Bioregion, historically a sparsely populated expanse of desert, had nearly 612,000 people as of the 1990 census, but is growing rapidly, as urban congestion and housing costs push people farther into the open areas.

Native Americans lands in the Mojave bioregion include the Chemehuevi Indian Reservation on the Colorado River, Twentynine Palms Indian Reservation, Fort Mojave Indian Reservation, and Fort Mojave Trust Lands, which both straddle the California-Nevada border.

Tourist Attractions, Industries

The desert has its own kind of beauty, captured in sweeping landscapes of pastel earth tones. The Mojave bioregion features some of the nation's most dramatic desert scenery, and is the home of three national parks -- Death Valley, East Mojave, and Joshua Tree -- under the National Park Service. The state Department of Parks and Recreation manages the Providence Mountains State Recreational Area near Goffs in eastern San Bernardino County, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operates Havasu National Wildlife Refuge on the Colorado River near Lake Havasu.

Military installations include Edwards Air Force Base in Kern, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties; Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Fort Irwin Military Reservation, Inyokern Naval Ordnance Test Station, and China Lake U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station in San Bernardino, Inyo, and the eastern end of Kern counties. Much of the desert is under the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages the Desert Tortoise Natural Area northeast of Palmdale, and Harper Lake near Barstow. The BLM has created a multi-agency, multi-species plan for the desert that designates certain areas for habitat, multiple uses, and development. It is designed to conserve habitat, foster economic development, and streamline the permitting process for development.

Major highways in the bioregion are Interstates 15, 40, U.S. Highway 395, and State Highways 18, 58, 62, and 127, and 247.

Mining -- including lucrative gold mining -- is a major industry in the Mojave bioregion. Off-road vehicle riding is a popular sport in the desert, which offers many trails across the plains and through the scrub. Ranching and livestock grazing are significant economic interests in this bioregion.

Climate and Geography

The Mojave bioregion is the western extension of a vast desert that covers Southern Nevada, the southwestern tip of Utah, and 25 million acres of Southern California -- one quarter of the state. The climate is hot and dry in summer. Winters are cool to cold, depending on the elevation, with occasional rainstorms that can quickly turn a gulch or dry lake into a flash flood zone.

The landscape is mostly moderately high plateau with elevations averaging 2,000 to 3,000 feet and isolated peaks that exceed 6,000 and 7,000 feet. Though appearing barren and remote, the desert teems with biodiversity, and more than 90 percent is within three miles of a paved road or off-road vehicle track.

Palm oases provide water for wildlife, as do many streams and springs. In prehistoric times, the bioregion contained great desert lakes, which have long since evaporated and seeped underground. This bioregion has the lowest elevation in North America, 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley National Park. The Mojave, Amargosa, and Colorado Rivers are the largest rivers in this mostly arid bioregion.

Plants and Wildlife

Common habitats of the Mojave bioregion are: desert wash, Mojave creosote bush, scattered desert saltbush, Joshua tree scrub, alkali scrub, palm oasis, juniper-pinyon woodland, and some hardwood and conifer forests at higher elevations. Cottonwood willow riparian forest is rare habitat in this bioregion, as is alkali marsh and open sandy dunes.

Rare animals include the Mohave ground squirrel, prairie falcon, Le Conte's thrasher, Nelson's bighorn sheep, gray vireo, desert tortoise, pale big-eared bat, Amargosa vole, and Mohave tui chub, an olive-brown and silver fish, and the cottontail marsh pupfish, found only in Death Valley National Park. Parks and recreation areas that provide water are the home of snowy plovers, least sandpipers, killdeer, white pelicans, teal, and thousands of migratory wading shore birds, as well as eagles, harriers, falcons, owls, coyotes, badgers, great blue herons, least Bell's vireos, red-tailed hawks, and Canada geese.

Rare plants include white bear poppy, Barstow woolly sunflower, alkali mariposa lily, Red Rock poppy, Mojave monkeyflower, and Stephen's beardtongue.

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