Abstract
Previous research revealed that severe overgrazing and resultant land degradation in the semiarid areas of northern Mexico created significantly higher temperatures in the border area. In this investigation, the temperature and precipitation records from ten ‘homogeneous’ stations are identified in the arid and hyperarid areas of northwest Sonora and are compared with the records from ten stations in southwestern Arizona. Our data show that the Mexican stations are again consistently warmer than the Arizona stations when statistical controls are applied to correct for the linear or non-linear effects of latitude and/or elevation. The stations in Sonora warm at a statistically significantly faster pace than the stations in Arizona during the study period. Furthermore, and consistent with other dryland areas undergoing land degradation, the stations in Sonora reveal a significant increase in the diurnal temperature range during the summer season. Local precipitation reduces the temperature differential between nations on the time scale of days, but enhances the differential on the time scale of months and seasons. Among other findings, the results show how land degradation in dryland areas appears to influence local historical temperature records.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aguirre, E. R. and Johnson, E. D.: 1983, ‘Current Status of the Natural Resources in the Northwest of Mexico’, Wildfire and Range Research Needs in Northern Mexico and Southwestern United States:Workshop Proceedings, United StatesDepartment of Agriculture, General Report WO-36, Washington, D.C., pp. 24-27.
Bahre, C. J. and Bradbury, D. E.: 1978, ‘Vegetation Change along the Arizona-Sonora Boundary’, Ann. Ass. Am. Geogr. 68, 145-165.
Balling, R. C. Jr.: 1988, ‘The Climatic Impact of a Sonoran Vegetation Discontinuity’, Clim. Change 13, 99-109.
Balling, R. C., Jr.: 1989, ‘The Impact of Summer Rainfall on the Temperature Gradient along the United States-Mexico Border’, J. Appl. Meteorol. 28, 304-308.
Balling, R. C., Jr.: 1991, ‘Impact of Desertification on Regional and Global Warming’, Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 72, 232-234.
Brown, D. E. (ed.): 1982, ‘Biotic Communities of the American Southwest-United States and Mexico’, Desert Plants 4, 1-342.
Bryant, N. A., Johnson, L. F., Brazel, A. J., Balling, R. C., Jr., Hutchinson, C. F., and Beck, L. R.: 1990, ‘Measuring the Effect of Overgrazing in the Sonoran Desert’, Clim. Change 17, 243-264.
Buffington, L. C. and Herbel, C. H.: 1965, ‘Vegetation Changes on Semidesert Grassland Range from 1858 to 1963’, Ecol. Monogr. 35, 139-164.
Conley, W., Conley, M. R., and Karl, T. R.: 1992, ‘A Computational Study of Episodic Events and Historical Context in Long-Term Ecological Processes: Climate and Grazing in the Northern Chihuahuan Desert’, Coenoses 7, 1-19.
Hereford, R.: 1984, ‘Climate and Ephemeral-Stream Processes: Twentieth-Century Geomorphology and Alluvial Stratigraphy of the Little Colorado River, Arizona’, Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull. 95, 654-668.
Hulme, M.: 1992, ‘A 1951-80 Global Land Precipitation Climatology for the Evaluation of General Circulation Models’, Clim. Dynam. 7, 57-72.
Hulme, M.: 1995, ‘Estimating Global Changes in Precipitation’, Weather 50, 34-42.
Jones, P. D.: 1994, ‘Hemispheric Surface Air Temperature Variations: A Reanalysis and an Update to 1993’, J. Clim. 7, 1794-1802.
Karl, T. R., Jones, P. D., Knight, R. W., Kukla, G., Plummer, N., Razuvayev, V., Gallo, K. P., LIndseay, J., Charlson, R. J., and Peterson, T. C.: 1993, ‘A New Perspective on Recent Global Warming: Asymmetric Trends of Daily Maximum and Minimum Temperature’, Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 74, 1007-1023.
Kumar, A., Leetmaa, A., and Ji, M.: 1994, ‘Simulations of Atmospheric Variability Induced by Sea Surface Temperatures and Implications for Global Warming’, Science 266, 632-634.
Pielke, R. A., Schimel, D. S., Lee, T. J., Kittel, T. G. F., and Zeng, X.: 1993, ‘Atmosphere-Terrestrial Ecosystem Interaction: Implication for Coupled Modeling’, Ecol. Model. 67, 5-18.
Schlesinger, W. H., Reynolds, J. F., Cunningham, G. L., Huenneke, L. F., Jarrell, W. M., Virginia, R. A., and Whitford, W. G.: 1990, ‘Biological Feedbacks in Global Desertification’, Science 247, 1043-1048.
Suzan-Azpiri, H.: 1994, ‘Ecological Effects of Exploitation of Olneya Tesota Gray and Associated Species in the Sonoran Desert’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Botany, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Unganai, L. S.: 1997, ‘Surface Temperature Variation over Zimbabwe between 1897 and 1993’, Theor. Appl. Clim. 56, 89-101.
United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA): 1996, ‘US/Mexico Border XXI Program’, Draft Framework Document, EPA 160-D-96-001, Washington, D.C.
Williams, M. A. J. and Balling, R. C., Jr.: 1996, Interactions of Desertification and Climate, London, Arnold.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Balling, R.C., Klopatek, J.M., Hildebrandt, M.L. et al. Impacts of Land Degradation on Historical Temperature Records from the Sonoran Desert. Climatic Change 40, 669–681 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005370115396
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005370115396