If the planet keeps warming, and extreme times of drought and chaotic precipitation continue, Madsen-Hepp told me she fears what’s next will be nothing but barren land. But they found less hardy shrubs, including ocotillo, also have moved down to take their place. Instead, her team discovered pinyon and juniper pines, thought to be extremely heat and drought tolerant, have moved up in elevation over the past few decades - and still aren’t thriving. “We tend to have this perspective that deserts are super resilient, ” she said. If any place stands a chance at thriving through climate change, it’s here, right? That’s why the latest findings from Madsen-Hepp are so alarming.
Just south of that spot, the Mojave Desert transitions into the Sonoran Desert, which is the hottest such climate in North America. That includes the interactive exhibit Hylozoic/Desires in my photo above, by Himali Singh Soin of India and David Soin Tappeser of Germany, where poetic commentary and indigenous music wash over the sand as the area’s famous wind turbines spin in the background. Several of this year’s installations, which are on display through May 7, comment on climate change and how our planet is transforming. I spent time over the weekend in that environment, as my husband and I continued an annual tradition of going on a scavenger hunt to track down all of the Desert X art installations that appear in the Coachella Valley each spring. Tesa Madsen-Hepp, an ecology doctoral student at UC Riverside, is sounding the alarm: Even our hardiest desert environments are transforming in alarming ways due to climate change.
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