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Kim Schaefer : A Vascular Flora of the Sacatar Trail Wilderness
April 6 @ 2:00 pm
A Vascular Flora of the Sacatar Trail Wilderness, Southern Sierra Nevada, CA.
Presented by Kim Schaefer on Saturday, April 6 at 2 pm
Kim Schaefer, a master’s student studying Botany at Claremont Graduate University and California Botanic Garden will be giving a presentation on her location of study, the Sacatar Trail Wilderness.
The Sacatar Trail Wilderness (STW), approximately 20 miles northwest of Ridgecrest, CA, occupies a unique ecological transition zone. This part of the southeast Sierra Nevada occurs at the interface of the vast Mojave Desert, Great Basin Floristic Province, and highly diverse California Floristic Province. The 90 mi2 area encompasses a significant elevational gradient from 3,500 to nearly 9,000 feet and supports a diverse array of vegetation communities, from creosote scrub to montane meadows. The STW is a “botanical black hole,” an area with little to no previous documentation of the plants that occur there. The absence of weather stations within the STW makes it difficult to understand the precise microclimates its plants are subject to, especially considering that conditions vary within such a wide elevational range. With more study, this region of the eastern Sierra could potentially serve as a setting for future research on plant migration in response to climate change.
This presentation is part of our 2024 Wildflower Exhibit