climate change
NMSU climate series kicks off with a look at Chihuahuan desert
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Dr. Debra Peters presenting “Chihuahuan Desert Landscape in an Uncertain Future” to kick off the Fall 2019 NMSU Climate Change Seminar Series. Photo by Leah Romero. The New Mexico State University Climate Change Seminar Series (NMSUCCESS) and Friends of Organ Mountains — Desert Peaks kicked off the semester last week with “Chihuahuan Desert Landscape in an Uncertain Future”, a presentation by Debra Peters, Ph.D., lead research scientist with the Jornada Experimental Range and adjunct faculty member at NMSU.
Peters explained that Doña Ana County in the distant past was 100 percent grasslands, but desertification has changed the area substantially, as it has in other areas, over the last couple hundred years. By 1915 the county was about 37 percent grassland and 63 percent shrubbery. By 1998, the area was only 8 percent grassland.