Ecological Restoration
Supporting life in the desert through restoration
The Sonoran Desert is a unique ecosystem, with incredible plant and animal diversity – but when the desert land is disturbed and degraded, it can’t support the same level of biodiversity. The desert can be negatively affected by human use, including off-trail travel, use of motorized vehicles, livestock grazing, and more. The Parsons Field Institute makes ecological restoration a priority because it is critical to make sure we have a healthy desert ecosystem for future generations. We conduct collaborative research to understand where disturbed lands occur and what the best techniques are to restore them.
Research Areas
Sonoran Desert Wildfire Recovery
Science staff and stewards at the Conservancy are working closely with the City of Scottsdale, Maricopa County Parks and Recreation, and Northern Arizona University on Sonoran Desert wildfire recovery and restoration.
The Sonoran Desert is not well adapted to wildfires. Sonoran Desert plants are typically found in clusters with open spaces between them. Historically, these open spaces helped reduce the risk of high intensity fires. However, over the last hundred years or so, people have introduced invasive plants from other arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Invasive plants like buffelgrass, fountain grass, and red brome fill in these open spaces, outcompete native plants for space and resources, and increase the fuel load and likelihood of hotter, larger, and more frequent wildfires. Our iconic Saguaros, a keystone species and endemic to the Sonoran Desert, and some other native plants, are not well-adapted to survive frequent fires. Wildfires also impact the quality of habitat and availability of resources like food and shelter for desert animals.
In June 2023, the Scottsdale Diamond fire burned 1,960 acres, including around 270 acres within the Scottsdale McDowell Sonoran Preserve with the rest in the Maricopa County McDowell Mountain Regional Park. This area of the Preserve is commonly called the “Gooseneck.” The Gooseneck makes up the narrowest part of the Preserve and provides important habitat linkage for animals moving between the northern and southern parts of the Preserve near Dynamite / Rio Verde road. Conserving this critical habitat corridor was already of concern due to an increase in surrounding urban development, a major road between the Gooseneck and the northern part of the Preserve, and a previous wildfire in the 1990s. With the recent burn, the Gooseneck is more vulnerable.
Science staff and stewards at the Conservancy are working closely with the City of Scottsdale, Maricopa County Parks and Recreation, and Northern Arizona University to monitor post-wildfire desert recovery and restore the desert. Recently started projects include:
• Monitoring and survey projects
• Reseeding initiatives
• Saguaro nurse plant experiment with the Living Labs initiative
Biocrust Cultivation
We partner with innovative scientists at Northern Arizona University with the support of the City of Scottsdale and Scottsdale Community College to test new methods to restore biocrust quickly.
Biocrust is a community of organisms including mosses, lichens, cyanobacteria and algae that live together on a thin layer of soil on the desert surface.
Once trampled, the biocrust community takes a long time to regrow. In the meantime, we lose all of the critical benefits that biocrust provides, including soil nutrients and erosion control.
We partner with innovative scientists at Northern Arizona University with the support of the City of Scottsdale and Scottsdale Community College to test new methods to restore biocrust quickly.
Collaborative projects include:
• Salvaging biocrust from construction sites and a storage experiment
• Testing different methods to grow crusts for reintroduction to the desert
• Field trials to grow biocrust directly in the desert environment
Restoration Techniques
