Plant Nutrients in Desert Soils

Abstract

A general understanding of desert soils and the plant nutrients that they contain may be obtained from a brief review of the desert areas in the southwestern USA. Within this general region there are many individual desert areas, surrounded by semiarid grasslands, and subhumid forests. The margins of deserts cannot be clearly defined because they expand during dry years and contract during wet years. For convenience, geographers have classified the southwest desert as two large land areas, called the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, based on differences in vegetation. The Yuma subdesert, which represents the extremely dry and hot Sonoran Desert, has a mean annual rainfall of about 8 cm. It is selected for detailed description to represent what is meant by a true desert. The soils of this selected area are representative of those in other desert valley floors throughout arid environments (Fuller 1975a).