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    Saguaro National Monument, Arizona
    Saguaro National Monument, Arizona
    Saguaro National Monument, Arizona
    Ebook180 pages1 hour

    Saguaro National Monument, Arizona

    By Napier Shelton

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    About this ebook

    This book is a simple account of the natural history of Saguaro National Monument. It is intended to help you understand the relationships between land, climate, plants, wild animals, and man in the environment of a hot desert. While it includes brief profiles of many representative species, it is not intended to serve as a guide to the monument. It does indicate where the several distinctive natural communities exist, and when and where to look for certain plants and animals. For identification purposes, you will need field guides.

    The present edition is my revision of the 1957 book by Natt Dodge, then naturalist for the Southwest Region of the National Park Service. The first five and the last two chapters are essentially new; the central chapters on plants and animals remain largely as written in the first edition.

    The authors wish to thank former and present members of the monument staff for their help and companionship, in both field and office. We are particularly grateful to Chief Naturalist Harold T. Coss, Jr., who devoted much time and effort to obtaining many of the photographs and, with Park Biologist Warren F. Steenbergh, gave the manuscript a thorough scrutiny. The cooperation and hospitality of Superintendent Harold R. Jones have created the best possible climate for work on the revised edition. National Park Service geologist Robert H. Rose contributed in very great measure to the geological content. Finally, our thanks go to the many students of desert life on whose knowledge this book has been built, and to monument visitors who ask questions—for their concern gives hope for better relations between man and nature.

    —N.S.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publisheranboco
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9783736416369
    Saguaro National Monument, Arizona

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      Book preview

      Saguaro National Monument, Arizona - Napier Shelton

      saguaro

      national

      monument

      ARIZONA

      Napier Shelton

      based on an earlier work by Natt Dodge

      NATURAL HISTORY SERIES

      preface

      This book is a simple account of the natural history of Saguaro National Monument. It is intended to help you understand the relationships between land, climate, plants, wild animals, and man in the environment of a hot desert. While it includes brief profiles of many representative species, it is not intended to serve as a guide to the monument. It does indicate where the several distinctive natural communities exist, and when and where to look for certain plants and animals. For identification purposes, you will need field guides.

      The present edition is my revision of the 1957 book by Natt Dodge, then naturalist for the Southwest Region of the National Park Service. The first five and the last two chapters are essentially new; the central chapters on plants and animals remain largely as written in the first edition.

      The authors wish to thank former and present members of the monument staff for their help and companionship, in both field and office. We are particularly grateful to Chief Naturalist Harold T. Coss, Jr., who devoted much time and effort to obtaining many of the photographs and, with Park Biologist Warren F. Steenbergh, gave the manuscript a thorough scrutiny. The cooperation and hospitality of Superintendent Harold R. Jones have created the best possible climate for work on the revised edition. National Park Service geologist Robert H. Rose contributed in very great measure to the geological content. Finally, our thanks go to the many students of desert life on whose knowledge this book has been built, and to monument visitors who ask questions—for their concern gives hope for better relations between man and nature.

      —N.S.

      contents

      The Desert Scene, 1

      The Sonoran Desert and the Monument, 3

      Climate: The Vital Factor, 9

      Rocks: Foundation and Soilmakers, 13

      Plant and Animal Zones, 19

      Desert Plants, 23

      Succulents, 25

      The Saguaro—Monarch of the Monument, 27

      Other Common Cactuses, 33

      Non-Succulents, 36

      Perennials, 36

      Ephemerals, 42

      Major Plant Communities of Saguaro, 49

      Plants of the Hills and Mountains, 55

      Oak-Pine Woodland, 55

      Ponderosa Pine Forest, 58

      Animals and How They Survive, 61

      Invertebrates, 62

      Amphibians, 64

      Reptiles, 64

      Birds, 66

      Mammals, 72

      The Rhythms of Nature, 79

      The Impact of Man, 83

      Appendix, 87

      Suggested Reading, 87

      Common and Scientific Names of Plants, 89

      Reptiles and Amphibians of the monument, 92

      Birds of the monument, 94

      Mammals of the monument, 97

      Brittlebush display along Cactus Forest Drive.

      the desert scene

      Scattered through the wide, lonely Sonoran Desert, isolated mountain ranges raise jagged blue silhouettes against the sky. The high ones wear a crown of dark pines and a speckled mantle of oaks. Lapping against their feet is the desert sea, studded with the green masts of giant saguaro cactuses rising above a motley crew of tough, strange, often handsome subordinates.

      On either side of the Santa Cruz Valley in southeastern Arizona, Saguaro National Monument embraces two of these ranges, with the desert lands at their feet. Although it was established primarily to preserve impressive stands of saguaros, it gains wholeness by including the mountains that shed the rocky soil on which the saguaros grow. The monument is in two sections, some 30 miles apart. The Rincon Mountain Section, east of Tucson, includes in its 99 square miles a spectrum of plantlife ranging from saguaro communities at the low elevations to a wet fir forest on the north slope of 8,666-foot Mica Mountain. The 24-square-mile Tucson Mountain Section, about 12 miles west of the city, has a denser stand of saguaros, on the lower slopes of a wild jumble of volcanic mountains dominated by 4,687-foot Wasson Peak.

      Within the cactus forests and upon the mountain slopes, life in myriad forms goes on in a delicate and continuous adjustment to changing environments. Over millennia, mountains rise and crumble, species evolve and fade from the scene. Over days and weeks and years, populations of plants and animals rise and fall, in response to thousands of interactions which we are only beginning to understand. In the following pages, we will meet the main characters in this natural drama (including some of the most improbable in all of nature); we will investigate the environmental stage upon which they perform; and we will try to understand something of the play itself, including our own role in it.

      The Saguaro Forest in the Tucson Mountain Section.

      the sonoran desert

      and the monument

      Saguaro National Monument is at the northeastern edge of the Sonoran Desert. Named for the state of Sonora, Mexico, in which the greater part of it lies, this, one of four major deserts in North America, is distinguished by differences in climate and vegetation. The Great Basin Desert, mainly in Nevada and Utah between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, has cold winters, sparse precipitation distributed fairly evenly throughout the year, and rather simple vegetation dominated by the low shrubs, sagebrush and saltbrush. Immediately to the south, in southern Nevada and southeastern California, is the Mohave Desert, with cool winters during which most of the year’s precipitation comes, and with plant cover consisting mostly of shrubs such as creosotebush. At higher elevations grows the Joshua-tree, a giant yucca. The Chihuahuan Desert, with cool winters and summer rainfall, covers the broad plateau of north-central Mexico, extending into southern New Mexico and west Texas. Its vegetation consists mostly of small cactuses, spiny shrubs, and succulent-leaved plants such as yuccas.

      Lying between the Mohave and Chihuahuan deserts, the Sonoran Desert has both winter and summer rainfall, with spring and autumn droughts. Its mild winters and bi-seasonal rainfall encourage a vegetation far surpassing in lushness and variety that of the other deserts. From west to east, the land rises and precipitation increases. Yuma, in southwestern Arizona, lying at 141 feet above sea level, gets about 3 inches a year. Tucson, in southeastern Arizona, is at 2,400 feet elevation and averages 11 inches a year. In the western part, where plains are extensive and mountain ranges low and far apart, a very few small-leaved species such as creosotebush dominate. Toward the east, mountain ranges become more numerous, shedding material on which more kinds of plants, particularly paloverde, mesquite, and cactuses, assume leading roles in the vegetative cover. Both sections of the monument lie within the eastern, wetter, more diversified part of the Sonoran Desert known as the Arizona Upland. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, to the southwest, is in an area transitional between the Arizona upland and Colorado River lowland phases of the Sonoran Desert.

      DESERT AREAS OF NORTH AMERICA

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