Canyonlands Ecology

We really got to learn more about the Canyonlands ecosystems during our stay. We loved all the cottonwood trees in their full fall bright yellow glow, wherever water was flowing.

Some of the other things we saw along the trails:

Narrowleaf yucca – Has many uses including: boiling the roots for soap, weaving the leaf fibers or using these fibers as paintbrushes. And amazingly each yucca species is pollinated only by one specific yucca moth!

Mormon tea shrub which looks really unique – long reed-like green twigs that grow off of a stout woody stalk – looks like something that should be growing in the water! As the name suggests the plant was used to make a tea by Mormon settlers.Singleleaf Ash – small shrub/tree with single leaves! Very different from the compound leaf ashes back east.Small prickly pear cactus – which were used medicinally by cutting the pads in half and applying to the skin (like aloe) and eaten by roasting the pads then removing the thorns before eating.

Juniper & pinyon pine land – saw lots of twisted juniper trees and pinyon pines with sagebrush scattered around. The pinyon pines have nutrient dense seeds (pine nuts) which are important for wildlife. All of the proteins needed by the human body can be found in the pinyon nut but the trees produce them only every 6 years or so! The Navajo used the sap for waterproofing and to mend pottery.
Saw really cool potholes – where water collects in the eroded sandstone and has created really unique microenvironments were all kinds of small microorganisms live tadpole shrimp, snails, spadefoot toads, fairy shrimp, and lots of lizardsWe saw lots of evidence of packrat middens once we knew what to look for – they collect all kinds of plant material from the desert and store them in their little nooks and crannies of the sandstone – some of the same collection nests have been used for thousands of years!!! We saw some really big ones!

One of the defining features was the biological soil crust that covers the undistributed desert soil – this fragile soil crust, which takes tens to hundreds of years to create, is made of living organisms: cyanobacteria, lichens, moss, fungi, algae, etc. It is critical for stabilizing the sand to prevent erosion, helping to absorb water and providing places for other plants to grow. Eventually the soil crust is visible, if left undisturbed long enough to develop, as black lumpy-looking sand. We saw some areas where it had developed green & yellow coloring!Here’s a cowboy dugout which was used from the late 1800s up until 1975! Pioneering cattlemen would cook, sleep, and seek shelter from the desert while rounding up their free ranging cattle within the canyons. We liked seeing all the different ways they used coffee (and other) cans for things around camp after using up their contents. In this environment it took 200 acres to feed one cow compared to the 2-3 acres it takes in New England!