Sustainable Desert Trip: How to Explore Arid Landscapes Without Leaving a Trace
Desert ecosystems are among the most fragile on Earth. A single footprint on biological soil crust — the living layer of cyanobacteria, mosses, and fungi that holds desert soil together — can take 15 to 25 years to recover. A discarded plastic bottle in the Mojave may persist for 450 years. Yet these landscapes also…