Wide-open spaces, often sparsely populated, characterize the Great Basin; that area of country from the Rocky Mountains to the Wasatch Range in Utah to the Sierra Nevada of Nevada and California. It runs north to eastern Washington and Oregon and southern Idaho. The Mojave Desert is its southern boundary. The term "Great Basin" refers to the fact that rivers and lakes in this region have no drainage to the sea. Included in the Great Basin is the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Areas of note in Nevada are the Black Rock Desert, Carson and Humboldt sinks and Pyramid Lake. The Great Basin covers 113,144 square miles and ranges from approximately 3,800 feet to more than 12,000 feet in elevation. Many of the mountain ranges in the Great Basin are 6,000-7,000 feet high.
Ecologists and botanists use plant types to define the Great Basin. Although you may not know the names of many of the individual plants in the Great Basin, you probably recognize their types. They are primarily sagebrush, salt desert shrub and pinyon-juniper (PJ) woodlands. Where these plant communities are located is determined by the amount of precipitation and temperature. Plants in the sagebrush community thrive in sandy, slightly alkaline soils with precipitation ranging from 7- 12 inches annually. Plants include big sagebrush, green and rubber rabbitbrush, bitterbrush, green ephedra, spiny hopsage, snowberry, grasses and forbs (flowers).
Salt desert shrubs occur in low, dry areas while PJ woodlands tend more towards the base of mountains. Some salt desert plants are shadscale, bud sagebrush, four-winged saltbush and spiny hopsage. In the PJ woodlands, we also find big sagebrush, bitterbrush, western serviceberry, snowberry and green and rubber rabbitbrush. In areas of greatest precipitation, aspen, cottonwoods and willows grow, and at the highest elevations, many kinds of pine, white fir, mountain hemlock and various shrubs such as greenleaf Manzanita, currants, gooseberries and chinquapin occur.
The Great Basin is an amazing place with more than 200 birds, 70 mammals and 20 amphibian and reptile species. There are numerous fish. Many of these creatures and many of our plants are sensitive, threatened or endangered species and may be found nowhere else in the world. The next time you drive through what, to some, may appear a barren wasteland, remember the Great Basin is much more than it seems.
For more information contact me at 775-887-2252 or skellyj@unce.unr.edu, or your local University of Nevada Cooperative Extension office. Check out many useful horticulture publications at www.unce.unr.edu. "Ask a Master Gardener" by e-mailing mastergardeners@unce.unr.edu.
* JoAnne Skelly is the Carson City and Storey County Extension educator for University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.