Much has been made of global warming and its effect on humans and the rest of the biological world—and rightly so, since changes in global temperature affects all biological communities, including those of our own desert. As if we needed hotter summers! Changes in temperature aren't something new to the planet, however. Causes varying from changing heat output from the sun to variations in the amounts of greenhouse gases have, though geologic time, cycled the earth from hothouse to ice house and back again.
One of the greenhouse gases that results in higher temperatures is
carbon dioxide, and part of controls on the amount of this gas available for heating
can be seen in our Chihuahuan Desert. Many of our mountain ranges are built, at least
in part, of limestone, and much of the makeup of a limestone is of the carbon and
oxygen, once components of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Thus much of the CO2
that otherwise might be turning up the heat is sequestered away in our desert rocks for
at least much of the next few million years.
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Limestone in the Franklin Mountains. Photograph by A.H. Harris.