Controlled Disturbance Experiment

A controlled experiment was conducted in April of 1979 to measure the effects of motorcycles as they travel over the desert landscape. The site was near Fremont Park in the Western Mojave Desert. When the site was revisited 20 years later, without any major disturbances in the meantime, the trail was almost impossible to detect, indicating that recovery rates can be relatively fast even if disturbance rate was quite high (Web 353).

A: the site before the experiment, 1979.

B: the site several hours later, after a motorcycle passed over it 200 times (equivalent to high disturbance).

C: The site 20 years later, with regrowth of vegetation and the soil compacted by 1/2.

Works Cited:

Webb, Robert H., Lynn F. Fenstermaker, Jill S. Heaton, Debra L. Hughson, Eric V. Mcdonald, and David M. Millar, eds. The Mojave Desert: Ecosystem Processes and Sustainability. Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press, 2009. Print.