Coupled Environmental Processes: Implications for Landscape Development in the northern Mojave Desert

Hypotheses were developed that several environmental processes in the near-surface biosphere are intimately linked or "coupled" and can lead to the development of highly stable landscapes in arid climates. Evaluation of these hypotheses can be used to design vegetated, evapotranspiration (ET) covers that could be long-term stable components of waste disposal sites, and to understand how disturbed land (from development or military activities) can be restored or rehabilitated. To define these links quantitatively through time, field and laboratory studies were conducted on changes in soil structure, soil hydraulic properties, vegetation establishment and diversity, and bioturbation processes at a series of four analog sites (~30, 2000-3000, 7500-12,500, and 125,000 years in age) on the Nevada Test Site, Nevada, USA. Tests included soil textural and structural determination; soil hydraulic property measurements in sub-canopy and plant interspaces; and vegetation, faunal and geomorphic surveys. Result