Publisher's Synopsis
In a lavishly illustrated large format, "The Sagebrush Ocean" summarizes a vast amount of information in a text of synthesis and celebration. Trimble mixes accounts of personal experiences with clear explanations of the natural history, while his photographs capture some of the most spectacular scenery of the American west.;The Great Basin desert - an ocean of sagebrush - sweeps from the Sierra to the Rockies, from the Snake River Plain to the Mojave Desert. Trimble's focus is biogeographical: what lives where, and why. He introduces concepts of desert ecology and discusses living communities of animals and plants that band Great Basin mountains - from the exhilarating emptiness of dry lake-beds to alpine regions at the summits of the 13,000 ft Basin ranges.;Trimble tells the fascinating natural history of the creation of the desert in the wake of the retreating glaciers ten thousand years ago; the struggle of lowland plants and animals with soil crusted by salts; the invasion of the pristine sagebrush/grassland by non-native plants; the introduction of plants to island mountains by birds that cache pine seeds; the fate of the drying inland seas of Mono, Pyramid and Great salt lakes; controversies over chaining and burning of sagebrush and pion-juniper woodland; the discovery of ancient bristlecone pines; and the biogeographical patterns unraveled from sources as various as fossil woodrat middens, climatology and genetics.
