YAORP (Yet Another Old Research Post)
Have been doing a bit more digging in old file directories and came across photos of previous research activities in the semi-arid desert of New Mexico, USA. This is the Jornada USDA Experimental Range near Las Cruces and consists of mesquite and scrub, with very little in the way of prairie grassland (which was what was here before the bovines got stuck in). Just by way of variety, you may happen upon Rattlesnakes and the occasional Jack Rabbit. Failing that, you may also find the flotsom and jetsom of missile carcasses that have strayed over the mountains from the White Sands Missile Testing Facility.
From Wikipedia:
The Jornada del Muerto (”Journey of the Dead Man” in Spanish, often mistranslated as “Journey of the Dead”) in New Mexico was the name given by the Spanish conquistadors to a desert basin and the particularly dry 100-mile (160 km) stretch of the route through it leading northward from New Spain (or Mexico) to northern New Mexico. This route became El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The Jornada del Muerto runs between the Oscura and San Andres Mountains on the east, with the Caballo Mountains and the Fray Cristóbal Range on the west. The name, Journey of the Dead Man probably originated with a German man who died there while fleeing the Inquisition in the later 1600s, although due to the complete lack of water, grazing or firewood the route through this area already had a negative reputation. Although quite flat, the Jornada del Muerto took several days to a week to cross and presented great difficulties to the earliest Spanish travelers who were on horseback, with wagons pulled by oxen or on foot.
The plain is a pretty impressive place to be out and about. For one thing, it certainly beats Norfolk on the weather front, but equally it’s just VAST. The salt flats towards Carlsbad give the place a run for its money, but it’s still an amazing landscape.
Here’s a closer view of our lovely tripod. For kicks we lugged this up and down a 1km transect all through the day to take spot measurements of surface reflectance and emmisivity. Can you see a theme here with how exciting earth/environmental science is?Just to prove that there was a positive outcome from all this hardship, here are a couple of references to the published results:
M. J. Barnsley, P. D. Hobson, A. H. Hyman, W. Lucht, J-P. Muller, and A. H. Strahler, (2000). Characterizing the Spatial Variability of Broadband Albedo in a Semidesert Environment for MODIS Validation. Remote Sensing of Envrionment 74, pp 58-68. [ScienceDirect Link]
Wolfgang Lucht, Andrew H. Hyman, Alan H. Strahler, Mike J. Barnsley, Paul Hobson, and Jan-Peter Muller, (2000). A Comparison of Satellite-Derived Spectral Albedos to Ground-Based Broadband Albedo Measurements Modeled to Satellite Spatial Scale for a Semidesert Landscape. Remote Sensing of Envrionment 74, pp 85-98. [ScienceDirect Link]