Word: cacti
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Across North America, warming-related changes are mowing down other flora too. Manzanita bushes in the West are dying back; some prickly pear cacti have lost their signature green and are instead a sickly pink; pine beetles in western Canada and the U.S. are chewing their way through tens of millions of acres of forest, thanks to warmer winters. The beetles may even breach the once insurmountable Rocky Mountain divide, opening up a path into the rich timbering lands of the American Southeast...
...have to stay indoors to avoid the midday heat. But despite those inconveniences--and in part because of them--they have developed a deep love of the desert in the five years since they moved here. Twenty miles from Tucson, their house looks out on a plain of saguaro cacti stretching to the Rincon Mountains. At night the stars shine brightly without competition from human lighting. Paul, 68, a semiretired software developer, gets all the hiking and bike riding he wants, and Carolyn attends lectures to learn how to grow desert plants in their yard. "You have to learn...
...wide temperature fluctuations, deserts are the host of a wide variety of species, each of which has adapted in its way to life in a desert ecosystem. Couch's spadefoot toads can live underground for much of their lives, awaiting some moisture before they come up and breed. Saguaro cacti are able to suck up a ton of water from one rain shower and then do without more rain for a year. Sidewinder rattlesnakes move across dunes in a unique S-shaped motion that minimizes contact with the scorching sand...
...county suddenly found itself paralyzed by a bird, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, which was listed as an endangered species after a survey found just 12 of them left in the state. The owl, which weighs 2.5 oz. and nests in cavities in saguaro cacti, had established a small population in prime development land northwest of Tucson. After the bird's listing, house building in the area came to a halt...
...bringing a new threat, fire. To conserve water, most desert species in the Southwest grow far apart, making it hard for fires to spread. Buffel grass grows easily in dry soil, forming a carpet of dry, flammable stalks that burns very hot after a lightning strike and can engulf cacti, yucca, ocotillo and the paloverde trees. "None of the native plants have fire adaptation. If they burn, they die," says Tom Van Devender, a senior research scientist at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson. "If there is recurring fire, you get a conversion from desert to savannah grassland...