Way Out West; 110; Extreme Enviornments in the West

I don't know if it's true or not, but I think it's true, I think it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true, it's true it's true Geography, geology, and climate conditions combine to form many extreme environments in the west from high altitude tundra to extensive dune formations to micro ecosystems deep inside Karlsbad caverns, extreme environments give us a glimpse of life on the edge, join us now as we explore extreme environments on this edition of Way Out West, the electronic bridge

This edition of Way Out West is brought to you by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, the University of New Mexico Distance Education Center, and the USDA Forest Service Southwestern Region Hello, and welcome to this edition of Way Out West, the electronic bridge. I'm your host, Tim Eilat, and in today's edition of Way Out West, we're going to take a look at extreme environments We're at the Great Sand dunes National Monument in Moscow, Colorado, to illustrate the adaptations living organisms have made to survive extreme environmental conditions. We'll also journey to White Sand's National Monument, check out Karlsbad caverns, explore an Alpine tundra, and learn about likens and their adaptations to life on the edge.

We have a lot to cover today, so we should probably get started, and with that take a look at what's going on with this dune system. In order for sand dunes complexes like this to form, they all form in the same way all over the world. You have to have three conditions which have to be in effect in order for these dune systems to form. One, you have to have a source material for the dune system. Two, you have to have a steady wind in order to get the sand or whatever the source material is into place. And three, you have to have a change of direction of that wind in order for it to dump the sand in place. Here at the Great Sand dunes National Monument, the source material is glacial outwash sand that covers the sand lewice valley.

And was put there after the place to seeing glaciation 10,000 years ago. That sand covers the whole bottom of the sand lewice valley, which is a desert. It gets about six inches of rainfall a year, so you have a lot of loose, unconsolidated sand material that's the perfect size to be picked up and blown and forming into these dunes. The second condition you have to have is you have to have wind speeds, constant wind speeds of about 15 miles per hour, at least with gusts that may go even more. Here at this, in the sand lewice valley, at the Great Sand dunes, as we can see, we've got a wind speed today of 15 to 20 miles per hour gusting up to 30 miles per hour. Get it up into the wind in the right place, and there we can see it.

There we've got the second condition met. The third condition is you have to have something that's going to change the direction of this steady southwestern wind in this spot. If you look behind us, you can see the angry to crystal range of the Rocky Mountains just up right here. These fault block mountains block this wind and force it almost straight up or funnel it through the three passes that exist here. When the wind does that change in direction, the sand that's being carried along is dropped in this spot. You notice these dunes butt right up to the base of those mountains. The sand itself is moved along, not in big dust clouds, big clouds of sand, high up in the air, although that can occur, but most of the movement occurs by what's called saltatory action. The sand is just moving and bouncing along less than an inch above the ground level itself. The wind may be moving at 15 to 20 miles per hour, but the sand itself is moving a little slower.

Before that hat blows across the continental divide, I should probably go over and get it. Chase it down. It might take me a while. While I'm doing that, why don't we take a look at how the white sand's national monument forms and how it's a different kind of sand structure. A gypsum sand that's very different from this quartzite outwash sand. Gotta go. Here at White Sand's National Monument, we can see again the classic dune formation and the conditions necessary for them to form. We have the constant wind which moves sand along in saltatory motion. The mountain range which redirects the wind and forces the sand to deposit at its base, in this case the sand and driest mountains of southern New Mexico, and the source material which at White Sand's National Monument is gypsum sand.

So what exactly is gypsum sand? Gypsum, chemical formula calcium sulfate, is one of the most abundant materials on the earth's surface, and it rarely exists as sand because of its water soluble. This solubility in water gives us the clue as to how these dunes form. Gypsum sand results from some different physical and chemical processes. First, high up in these mountains water percolates through a gypsum deposit from 250 million years ago, dissolving the calcium sulfate that makes up the rock. That water then flows into the closed tulorosa basin. Now a closed basin is one in which the water does not flow out. It just sinks into the ground. And the lowest point in the tulorosa basin is Lake Lucero at the southwest corner of the White Sand's National Monument. Water that does not percolate into the ground evaporates. And when it does, it leaves behind its chemical load of calcium sulfate forming new gypsum deposits.

Usually in the form of selenite crystals. This is the source material for the White Sand's sand dunes. These very fine particles get picked up by the wind and bounced along to add to the dunes, just like at Great Sand Dunes National Monument. And the fact that it's in a desert environment means that the gypsum itself after it's on the surface isn't going to dissolve in a lot of rain because it's so dry. So what kind of environment does this create? This environment creates very extreme conditions for any organisms to survive. In addition to trying to stay above the shifting dunes, like the Skurf P at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, the plants at White Sand's National Monument must also be able to survive the extreme alkalinity of the gypsum substrate. Let's look more closely at these plant adaptations to life in the dunes. In both places, there are plants that dominate in this ever shifting environment.

At Great Sand Dunes, we have specialist plants like the Skurf P and some dune grasses. And at White Sand's National Monument, we have specialists like San Verbena, Spanish Brum, and of course, more dune grasses. In both places, the plants struggle to keep ahead of the shifting sands. Animals adapt in ways similar to desert animals. They're mainly nocturnal, which is why we have to look at evidence of their passing. Here we have some scorpion tracks, left last night, and some tracks from a bleached, eerless lizard, an animal that blends in well, but is still very much a nocturnal animal. Now let's look at an even simpler ecosystem in the darkness of Karlsbad Caverns National Park. Here in the caverns, we can see the different cave formations that occur as water drips down through the limestone rock formations, picks up calcium and magnesium in those limestone formations. And then as it gets here into the cavern, it leaves those minerals behind in these various kinds of cave formations, stalactites, stalagmites, curtain formations, popcorn formations.

All of these come from the evaporation of that water, leaving behind the minerals that were dissolved in it as it passed through the limestone rock above. And again, all of this is formed from just little tiny reef animals, 250, 260 million years ago, in the Permian Age. What we see here is a stalactite dripping down, forming the stalagmite below it, and they're coming closer and closer together, and will eventually form what's called a column. And if we look over to the left, we can see one of those column formations that's taken millions of years to form just from the precipitation of the calcium and magnesium crystals out of the water as it's dripped through this formation. This pool of water, which is under Crystal Springs dome, is one of many perched pools, which are found throughout Crawlsbad caverns.

We call them perched pools, because they are established right above the water table. In this area, the water table will succeed down to about 18 to 2,000 feet below the cave surface. These pools will fill up and drain out at about the same ratio. The level of water is maintained at about at the same level throughout the entire year. During droughts, the pool level will sink a little bit, and of course during the rainy seasons, a few months after you'll notice that the level of water will rise. So these pools are basically at the same level throughout the entire year that the water is seen in the cave. When they see water in a cave, always asking, where are the blind fish, the blind salamanders, or the blind shrimp? In Crawlsbad caverns, due to the fact that these waters do not possess a high level of oxygen, there is no type of aquatic life in the pools. The only aquatic life that is found in these pools is microorganisms such as bacteria and parasites that can survive in a low oxygen environment.

From the parasites, of course you have other animals that feed off the parasites in the bacteria, the mites that live in the cave, the scorpions, the spiders, the millipedes, crickets and beetles. All these are all part of the same ecosystem of the cave environment. The crickets and the beetles themselves will feed off of each other during hard times. Most of the time they just feed off of other smaller insects, the crickets or the smaller crickets or the smaller spiders or other smaller insects that will be found in the cave. There we got to look at a very simple aquatic ecosystem that's developed in total darkness. Now let's look at another watery environment where organisms have to contend with the conditions of extreme heat. We're at a hot springs in the Hames Mountains.

And what we're going to look at are the special conditions that organisms have to deal with in order to survive here in this particular environment. The things that this hot spring have that will affect the organisms around it or that the organisms that live in it have to deal with are the effects of high temperature and high levels of minerals in the water. You can see how hot this is. You can actually see some steam coming up. Right here you can see that there's this real dark green algae and the temperature is 47 degrees Celsius. As we walk down the stream course we can see some changes definitely in the kind of algae that's present. And we walk a little further and we see a smaller spring outlet with a lot of black stuff around it. Now this is a good indication of the presence of hydrogen sulfide in the water. And if you were standing here you would know that there was hydrogen sulfide present in these deposits because of the smell. It has that rotten egg smell. But as we get down here further as you notice there's some soil formation starting to occur down here.

And we can actually see the growth of some vascular plants. And in the pool the water temperature is 36 degrees Celsius. So as we walk up this way again we see some of the black evidence of hydrogen sulfide. And then we come over and look at this pool. Now most of this looks like colored mineral deposit. But there are places where you can see that there are bits of algae and it's different from the green algae that we looked at earlier. This is that was more of a filamentous algae and you have a little bit of that kind of algae here. But these are more single-celled types of algae deposits in these areas.

Red, yellow in color and you can get a little bit of an idea of a different ecosystem in this area. Now our water temperature here in this pool is about 32 degrees Celsius. So it's a little cooler or this lead running into the pool is a little cooler than the pool itself. And one of the things we can see is there are some different organisms that are coming here to either get some water or maybe get some minerals to live on. The flying insects can land and take off but something that's really kind of interesting is we have some organisms out here. Now if you follow my shadow you can see we have some kinds of larvae that are living in the mineral bath itself.

So these organisms need to be highly adapted to living in a highly mineral-rich environment. One of the things we don't want to do if we sample in an area like this is to walk in there because those formations, these mineral formations can be very fragile and walking on them can damage them and then damage the habitat that these organisms are existing in. Now that we've looked at the hot spring environment itself we're going to go down to the river and look at the influence the hot spring environments with its heavy load of minerals and high water temperatures has on the river itself, the river system. What you can see here are the results of that hot spring, the high mineral content from that hot spring, depositing the minerals as the water evaporates, those minerals are left behind and it's formed this soda dam.

That's the name of this formation is the soda dam and it actually did dam up the famous river at one time until the incoming water dissolved that plug and then let the stream run through again. But behind it you can see the effects of that damning process through the thousands of years that it was there. Now what we see in this large location are the mineral deposits themselves, a travertine deposit is what it's called. And just across the stream we can see the actual remnants of the old volcanic or magma plug that the heat from which is still making the hot springs as they are today. So you can see the actual differences in the rocks very clearly. Something you should notice about this location is the amount of algae that's in the stream itself.

You can see it on these rocks and this foam, this foamy stuff. Now what this shows us is the high amount of productivity that's in this water and if we had some chemical testing equipment we might see that we had what our levels of nitrates and phosphates are or if this is related to the kinds of minerals that are being deposited by the hot spring. Now if we look at our water temperature for this location we'll see that it is 16 degrees Celsius. Again much cooler than the hot springs that are feeding into this stream. So the much larger stream water absorbs that heated water and it doesn't affect the temperature very much. But obviously we've got a different mineral content as you can see from the foaming action and the different algae that's growing here.

Now let's take a look at some of the plants and animals adapted to living in a remnant alpine tundra on Wheeler Peak. Organisms on these mountain tops have adapted to survive extremely harsh weather and climate conditions. First the growing season is very short usually just six to ten weeks so the plants have to flower and set seeds very quickly. Next there's not much available moisture during the growing season like deserts these areas have small amounts of rainfall, high evaporation potentials and high levels of ultraviolet radiation. The high evaporation potentials are due to constant high winds. These high winds form strange patterns in any woody vegetation found.

These patterns are called crumholts. Very high amounts of ultraviolet radiation are due to the thin atmosphere at the elevations above 3500 meters. Plants must have protection from both of these desiccating forces. Plant adaptations to survive in the alpine tundra are very similar to water saving adaptations found in desert plants. Leaves are reduced in size and they usually have hairy or waxy coatings on their surfaces. In addition to preventing water loss these coatings protect the plant from the high amounts of ultraviolet radiation. You'll also notice that all of the plants in the alpine and sub alpine areas are low growing to stay out of the high winds as much as possible. Resident animals like this yellow bellied marmot actually hibernate for most of the year feeding heavily on the highly productive plants in the brief time they are out during the growing season.

Marmots are one of the largest members of the squirrel family and are sometimes called whistle pigs for the shrill warning calls they use. Because of the short growing season in the alpine tundra one of the major plant pollinators in this area are small opportunistic flies. Butterflies and bees are also important pollinators in these tundra areas moving up and down the mountain side on a daily basis showing us that all life adapts to the conditions available in the surrounding environment. Likens are pioneer organisms that are typically the first multicellular life forms to inhabit harsh barren landscapes. Likens are widespread in nature and can be found in dry deserts, on young lava flows, sun-baked rocks, tree trunks, and in bare soils.

Before we explore the extreme conditions to which likens are adapted let's look at what makes a lichen a lichen. In this cross section we see the typical structure of a lichen, the protective upper cortex, the algae layer where photosynthesis occurs surrounded by fungus strands called hyphae which absorb nutrients produced by the algae, the medulla composed of more fungal hyphae and the thinner lower cortex with its anchoring and absorptive rhizines. In nature likens are very dry and brittle most of the time. When they're in this condition the organism is in a state of suspended animation. The cortex is thickened and can protect the lichen from extremes of temperature and sunlight. But add a little rain and the cortex absorbs the water, softens, and the captive algae begins photosynthesis, making food for itself, and the fungal support structure.

This trait comes in handy in desert regions where likens can be found on exposed rocks and bare soils just waiting for the infrequent rains. This huge colony of frutacose or shrubby likens on a northeast facing slope in the Bistai Badlands is a good example of lichen's ability to survive in some of the harshest most alkaline soil conditions in the west. 10,000 feet higher in elevation we see some crustose or encrusting likens on an exposed rock surface in an alpine tundra on top of Wheeler Peak, cleaning closely to the rock surface to survive the harsh conditions of high winds, dry air, and high ultraviolet radiation. In between these two extremes we find folios or leafy likens that are usually found on the bark or branches of trees in many types of forest, like this example in the branches of a cork bark fur.

Whatever form of lichen we look at one thing holds true for all of them. They can be found thriving in places where other life forms struggle just to survive. OK, well that does it for today's edition of the Electronic Bridge project. We've taken a look at some really extreme physical and chemical conditions that living organisms in the southwest have adapted themselves to survive in. I also got my hat back, took me a while, I'm a little out of breath, but I managed to chase this puppy down before I went over the continental divide. I'm your host, Tim Adelaide, and this has been Way Out West, the Electronic Bridge. Today's program has been brought to you by the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Pre-College Science Initiatives,

which support scientific institutions in promoting young people's interest in science. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, providing natural history education to the citizens of New Mexico since 1985. The University of New Mexico Distance Education Center, and the USDA Forest Service Southwestern Region. Additional funding has been provided by the Northern New Mexico Network for rural education, New Mexico Mesa, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Region. Program outfitters are recreational equipment incorporated, purveyors of quality outdoor gear and clothing since 1938.

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