The Dzrtgrls explore mines, ghost towns, rockhounding spots, petroglyphs, geocaching and metal detecting sites, and take lots of great pictures in the process.
posted by rollbiz on Apr 26, 2009 - 12 comments

Nestled amid the red buttes of Papago Park in Phoenix, the Desert Botanical Garden hosts one of the world’s finest collections of desert plants. Home to 139 rare, threatened and endangered plant species from around the world, the Garden offers interesting and inspiring experiences, while their website offers gardening help including good growing guides. The Desert Botanical Garden has educational programming and research for children as well as adults. The internationally acclaimed living collection of over 20,000 desert plants, with particular emphasis on those inhabiting the Sonoran Desert, continues to serve the public and scientific community. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Feb 7, 2009 - 13 comments

10 Incredible Ancient Oases.
posted by homunculus on Aug 24, 2008 - 21 comments

Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara. "How a dinosaur hunter uncovered the Sahara's strangest Stone Age graveyard."
posted by homunculus on Aug 16, 2008 - 9 comments

Very nice High definition video from Phillip Bloom music is "28 Ghosts IV" by Nine Inch Nails. Deer Vegas music is Deer Stop" by Goldfrapp [more inside]
posted by hortense on Jul 26, 2008 - 18 comments

The Light-Painter of Mojave D: An Interview with Troy Paiva (previously) about his photography and his new book, Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration. [Via BLDGBLOG]
posted by homunculus on Jun 12, 2008 - 5 comments

Lost America is a purdy website featuring night photography of ghost towns, urban exploration, decommissioned military facilities, airplane graveyards, and other roadside abandonments of the American west.
posted by dhammond on Mar 2, 2008 - 22 comments

Iconic joshua tree has fallen... many fine photographs centering on the national park and lots of information about the trees are included on this fan site. via [more inside]
posted by hortense on Feb 20, 2008 - 29 comments

Jonson takes pictures of The Salton Sea, which is a strange place, like some kind of huge, perpetual, Burning Man, but by a huge, salty, polluted, manmade lake with distant shores, dying fish, has-been resort towns, Salvation Mountain, fundie dinos, fountains of youth, and nice churches. [via mefi projects] [previously] [howdy]
posted by brownpau on Jan 30, 2007 - 36 comments

Death Valley car trip photos including some panoramas of the racetrack and its mysterious stones, and cute kids. via
posted by hortense on Dec 31, 2006 - 19 comments

You may know that some of the Tatooine parts of Star Wars were filmed in Tunisia . But did you know you can spend the night in Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's distinctive underground house? In the middle of the desert, local people have taken up residence in the 30-year-old set.
posted by gottabefunky on Dec 12, 2006 - 20 comments

The moral terrain of the desert. Mary Austin describes a desert "where the borders of conscience break down... where the boundary of soul and sense is as faint as a train in a sand-storm... [where] the senses are obsessed by the coil of a huge and senseless monotony” -- is that the desert of photographer Richard Misrach? Joan Didion describes a "country so ominous and terrible that to live in it is to live with antimatter, [where] it is difficult to believe that 'the good' is a knowable quantity... [T]here is some sinister hysteria in the air out here tonight” -- is that the desert of photographer Bill Lesch? Possibly the most depressing are these suburban deserts.
posted by salvia on Sep 10, 2006 - 7 comments

"The Bible describes how to make ice on the desert. Please describe the procedure and explain how it fits your knowledge of heat transfer."

Your assignment: make ice in the desert. Without electricity. Without extra chemicals. Without extra gadgetry or imports. Oh, and the temperature is about 55 degrees (13C). It can be done, there is science behind it. And yet we seem to have forgotten something that everyone used to know.
posted by jessamyn on Aug 1, 2006 - 43 comments

The Amazon rainforest becomes "a desert" after three consecutive years without rain - the trees die. Next year would be the third year of an ongoing drought. The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emmisions at current rates) - 3/4's of the carbon is released within a year of dieing. The Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".
posted by stbalbach on Jul 25, 2006 - 80 comments

"The sky turned orange as the storm approached, until total darkness blanketed the ground." Sandstorms in Iraq -- caused by heating of the desert sand and a northwesterly summer wind known as the shamal -- can kill. (A similiar storm over Interstate 5 in California in 1991 caused a deadly 164-car pileup.) They can also be uncannily beautiful and dream-like when seen from a distance (WMP link).
posted by digaman on Jun 4, 2006 - 35 comments

Living and working in the desert. I was reading this interesting article when I came upon this: [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Mar 30, 2006 - 28 comments

Rock art tour in the Sahara.
posted by Wolfdog on Mar 13, 2006 - 6 comments

Remains of guru's disciple identified Shortly after the 1998 death of "A Separate Reality" guru Carlos Castaneda, whose peyote-fueled sorceric journeys into the Mexican desert captured the imagination of a generation in the 1970s, five of his closest disciples made out their wills, disconnected their telephones, and disappeared into thin air. via
posted by hortense on Feb 20, 2006 - 46 comments

Coso Rock Art: "The Coso Rock Art District, a National Historic Landmark deep in the U.S. Navy's testing station at China Lake, contains one of America's most impressive petroglyphic and archeological complexes . . . . Coso rock art has become famous for its stylized representational symbolic system, a system that has intrigued—and baffled—archeologists and lay observers for decades." A guide to the rock art types here. See also A Guided Tour of Coso Rock Art and the Coso Gallery.
posted by LarryC on Jul 30, 2005 - 8 comments

Death Valley in bloom. Lots more here and the story is here. Flickr photos with tags deathvalley+flowers. (Full disclosure: I work on Flickr. -ericost) NPR did a segment recently. Desert USA has a guide. The Death Valley National Park news page has a link to two PDFs. Wildflower Update. (via MetaTalk, five fresh fish, monju_bosatsu, ericost, euphorb, ori, and the MeFi community. All text and copy directly lifted from the thread.)
posted by loquacious on Mar 15, 2005 - 24 comments

The Goleta Air & Space Museum/ Goleta Natural History Museum While looking for hot spring photos, I found this virtual museum. It is loaded with amazing shots of warbirds in flight and the latest in space travel On the other hand some very well done nature photography. Including desert panoramas This is all the work of one man.
posted by hortense on Jan 31, 2005 - 13 comments

The mating habits of barchan sand dunes.
posted by homunculus on Dec 25, 2003 - 2 comments

Columbia Univ. severs ties with Biosphere 2. I remember when Biosphere 2 opened and watched as the team of starry-eyed scientists entered the self-sustaining environment. It's even been the subject of a bad Hollywood movie. But now the structure may become nothing more than a giant scrap pile of steel and glass in the desert. The mission of the project was impressive, and despite glitches such as acidic water and "crazy ant" infestation, should an experiment be abandoned because it didn't go as expected? Or is it just man's folly to try and replicate intelligent design?
posted by archimago on Sep 10, 2003 - 11 comments

it does look like fun
burning man 2003. more links? photos? stories? from this years fun in the desert.
posted by specialk420 on Aug 30, 2003 - 42 comments

Grand Challenge The research arm of the US Department of Defense, DARPA, is sponsoring a $1 million winner take all contest to build a completely autonomous vehicle which can navigate a roughly 250 mile course in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in under 10 hours. Teams from Caltech and Carnegie Mellon have formed, though anyone is allowed to enter.
posted by split atom on May 13, 2003 - 8 comments

It's nice being green. The south Sahara's getting its groove back, after 4,000 years.
posted by DenOfSizer on Sep 20, 2002 - 9 comments

Deserts are dry? Sue. "The families of 11 immigrants who died [while] illegally crossing into Arizona from Mexico have filed a $41 million claim against two federal agencies, saying the government's refusal to put water out in the desert contributed to the migrants' deaths." Do they have a case?
posted by darukaru on May 11, 2002 - 53 comments

How long would it take you to run 135 miles? In more than 120 degree heat? Up more than 8,000 feet in elevation? Every year some very determined people run the Badwater Ultramarathon from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney in California. It almost makes the Everest Marathon and Ironman Triathalons look easy.
posted by euphorb on Oct 11, 2001 - 12 comments

In the desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, charity becomes political protest as humanitarian groups seek to put hundreds of gallons of water in the form of "watering stations" -- a few gallons of water and a blue flag -- on federal, military, private, and Indian lands.
posted by sudama on Jun 11, 2001 - 3 comments

Burning Man. Does anyone really care anymore? It always seemed like a bogus 'artsy' version of Spring Break to me. Plus it pisses me off that a bunch of rampaging fools trash a perfectly good desert.
posted by Mr. skullhead on Sep 2, 2000 - 5 comments

The Burning Man website has undergone a massive redesign, it seems. Much better than before, and with only 12 days left to BM2K. I could cry, really... I can't make it this year, nor did I make it to Defcon, H2K, or any other gather. Bring back stories from the fire for me, people.
posted by Jairus on Aug 15, 2000 - 10 comments

National Park Service removes the Lonely Phone. Thousands mourn.
posted by baylink on May 25, 2000 - 1 comment

Phallic sandstorm leaving Europe, headed for US. More news at 11.
posted by mathowie on Mar 1, 2000 - 0 comments