ghostsofevolution's video: CTL 3C - Joshua Tree Baseline videos 2017 - pt 2 Mojave Preserve Cima CA

Part 3 of 5 of Connie Barlow's 2017 series of "baseline" ecological filming of Joshua Tree habitats in California and southwestern Utah. This episode features the richest Joshua Tree habitat found anywhere: in Mojave National Preserve, along the Cima Road, near the Teutonia Peak Trail and White Cross World War 1 memorial. Baseline documentation is crucial for scientifically assessing habitat viability (and degradation) for Joshua Trees in future decades, owing to anthropogenic climate change. UPDATE: Summer 2020 this section of the Mojave Preserve burned with devastating consequences for many of the towering, mature trees. Learn about that fire here: https://www.npca.org/articles/2640-what-the-fire-took -5070750093 Note: I am not as pessimistic as the author of the NPCA fire essay, as I have witnessed prolific root suckering amid the horticultural plantings at the Kayenta subdivision of SW Utah (just over the mountains that have prevented Joshua Tree from moving farther poleward absent human assistance). Access these two final episodes in this Joshua Tree series to learn about the NE-most wild population in Utah and then to see the new plantings thriving beyond that range in Kayenta: Pt. 3D: Baseline Documentation: SW Utah (2017) - https://youtu.be/dFk_ytXUHKc Pt. 3E: Baseline Documentation: SW Utah Landscaping - https://youtu.be/nTegGDl05sQ BASELINE ECOLOGICAL DOCUMENTATION in the past has been both unintentional (via photographs taken for other reasons) and intentional data collection by experts who publish or archive their results in text, table, or graphic formats. Expert documentation requires extensive training, with attention to future replicability by different individuals. Ongoing climate change coupled with contraction of funds available for ecological studies imply that it will be crucial for amateurs to step forward and photo- or video-document today's baselines en masse. This videographer highly recommends that others begin to do this, too. Fortunately, so long as geographic coordinates are provided (and especially if local topographic or geologic features provide visible points of reference), amateurs can substantially contribute to baseline ecological data collection — even if their ability to identify plant species is severely limited. What is highly recommended is that amateurs learn enough to ensure that their videography will focus on aspects of the vegetation that indicate adult health, reproductive capacity (vegetative or by seed), seed dispersal, and other aspects of generational recruitment. For example, I (Connie Barlow) am no expert in Joshua Trees, yet I know enough to recognize the importance of filming (and posting) their current conditions — in their habitat areas through which I have other reasons for venturing into. Any of us can do that. As well, because creating a video channel for posting results on youtube is free, anyone can do this with no access to funds. Hopefully, youtube (or at least the educational portion of youtube) will remain viable and widely accessible for decades ahead, including long after the original documentarians are dead and gone. • Music credit: Alan Tower "Flow" Note: This 5-part series on Joshua Tree is a subset of Connie Barlow's ongoing "Climate, Trees, and Legacy" video documentation series on youtube (CTL), which can be accessed in full at http://thegreatstory.org/climate-trees-legacy.html Note: In 2019 the L.A. Times editorial board advocated "threatened species" status for Joshua Tree. Based on her experience with Torreya Guardians (which uses an "exception" in the Endangered Species Act for citizens to move ahead on their own with assisting the northward migration of the endangered Florida Torreya), Barlow advocated non-listing of JT, along with encouragement of citizens and horticulturalists and scientists to begin experimental plantings north of its current range (assisted range expansion). See her advocacy beginning on page 13 here: "Conservation in a Time of Climate Change: Rethinking the Value of Endangered Species Listings" http://www.torreyaguardians.org/torreya-report-aug-2019.pdf