Browner or greener, crowded or empty: Biological and social extremes in desert communities

Borrego Springs, California and other desert communities are at the mercy of extremes: extreme drought, extreme invasions, extreme economic booms and busts, and extreme transformations in how to manage, value, and identify with desert landscapes. Deserts encapsulate mainstream American culture’s obsession with extremes: we think of them as barren wastelands separated from our idealized nature, yet we marvel at their resilience and diversity. Here, we demonstrate how tourism-linked desert communities suffer from the ephemeral nature of their environs, how climate change is creating new and different desert extremes, and how desert culture can reshape itself in the face of extremity.