Agate Desert

The Agate Desert is a prairie located near White City, Oregon, 53 acres (21 ha)[1] of which is protected as the Agate Desert Preserve.[2][3] The area is not in fact a desert as its name suggests; it is so named because of the abundance of agate, petrified wood, jasper, and other minerals found there.[4] Much of the World War II army training base of Camp White was built in the Agate Desert. The Nature Conservancy is working to preserve the Agate Desert as a native Rogue River Valley grassland.[1]

Ecosystem

The area contains seasonal vernal pools that act as their own self-sufficient ecosystems.[1] When the pools have dried up in the late spring, rings of wildflowers bloom in their place and the various plants and animals enter a period of dormancy until the next spring. The pools contain a rare species of fairy shrimp.[5] The Agate Desert is also the only known place where the endangered big-flowered woolly meadowfoam plants grow and the desert contains over 500 of the plants.[6] Cook's lomatium or Cook's Desert Parsley is also found in the Agate Desert and only grows naturally elsewhere in the French Flat of Illinois Valley, also in Oregon.[7] In 1998, Henri Dumont discovered a new species, Dumontia oregonensis, also known as the Hairy Water Flea, in the desert, and it is not known to live anywhere else.[8]

Preservation

Ecologists are currently conducting prescribed burns to the area, and volunteers are then spreading seeds of the native grasses and wildflowers in order to restore them to the area.[1] Ecologists are also studying the various species, many of them rare, in the vernal pools. Development in the valley has left it at only about 25% of its original size.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "The Agate Desert". The Nature Conservancy. Archived from the original on 18 August 2015. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  2. ^ "The Nature Conservancy's Agate Desert Preserve". Archived from the original on 24 October 2010. Retrieved 21 June 2011.
  3. ^ "Agate Desert". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  4. ^ "Jackson County Place Names Database". Jackson County Genealogy Library. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  5. ^ a b "The Agate Desert". Land Conserve. Archived from the original on 10 September 2015. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  6. ^ "Big-flowered wooly meadowfoam". Oregon Department of Agriculture. Archived from the original on 4 May 2009. Retrieved 28 April 2009.
  7. ^ "Habitat Will Be Protected". Oregon Live. 29 July 2009. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  8. ^ Hill, Richard. "Researchers make a giant Oregon find". Citizens Review Online. Retrieved 26 August 2015.

42°25′45″N 122°53′50″W / 42.42917°N 122.89722°W / 42.42917; -122.89722