Wilshire/Nielson: Their Time Come Round at Last

From my time at the US Geological Survey in the late 1970s, I have a strong memory of a brown-bag presentation by Survey scientists Howard Wilshire and Jane Nielson on the degradation of the desert. In what passed for cheap multimedia at the time, it used two slide projectors and a coordinated soundtrack to show gorgeous pictures of ugly things: offroaders raising dust, litter among the cactuses, freshly ruined land. As I recall it, this was not one of their official projects, but in the 30 years since they have enlarged their topic into a timely one worthy of the Anthropocene Age—what can we do about the American West now, knowing that its ability to sustain us is on our hands? Wilshire and Nielson's new book on the subject is The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery. I plan to see them speak tonight to the Peninsula Geological Society at Stanford University (local people come on by, it's free).

One small thing I hope to learn is the identity of this photo, which is on their book cover. It shows a gigantic plume of dust rising from the foot of a mountain range. My guess is that it shows the dry bed of the former Owens Lake, between the Sierra Nevada and Inyo Mountains. Once a thriving place with its own steamship line, the lake was drained when Los Angeles claimed its water. Now the lake bed is a health hazard—the single largest source of airborne dust in North America—and a potent symbol of the prices paid for political choices.

UPDATE: The photo is actually from the southernmost Central Valley in December 1977, a dust storm that blanketed the Bakersfield region with a thick coat of grit. Wilshire told me, "I studied that event and it was the most impressive thing I've ever seen." Learn more about the book at losingthewest.com.