Lmst

Trump administration eyes Mojave Desert groundwater as potential source for arid Arizona. Looks like Cadiz new spin at trying to financially benefit from Mojave groundwater is back again. #groundwater #California #Mojave #politics #Cadiz #water https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/facing-colorado-river-crunch-trump-admin-eyes-socal-groundwater-00414098

Indigo Rambler
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Hey, here's a photo from one of my night photography adventures! This is a vintage 1966 Rambler that I stumbled upon on my travels. I perched my camera on a tripod, opened the shutter for a long time, and then walked around lighting this subject with a handheld light. A burst of blue light on the headlight gives it an extra touch of intrigue and mystery.
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For photos, books, workshops and more: www.kenleephotography.com
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(Plate 9351) Pentax K-1/15-30mm f/2.8 lens. 32 seconds f/8 ISO 200. April 2023.
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#kenlee #nightphotography #lightpainting #YourShotPhotographer #mojave #mylensrental #nightportraits #astrophotography #urbex #urbanexploration #rambler

Western Tanager chilling near a small lake in the Mojave Desert on a 100 degree day. #nature #photo #photography #birds #birders #birdwatchers #birding #California #birdphoto #birdwatching #DailyBird #BirdsOfPixelfed #BirdsOfMastodon #tanager #naturephotos #mojave #desert

How many runways do you see for Mojave airport (USA) ? : The answer is on https://www.bigorre.org/aero/meteo/kmhv/en #mojave #usa #mojaveairport #kmhv #mhv #airport #aviation #avgeek vl

And Then There Was Crimson
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Hey, here's a photo from one of my night photography safaris! This is a vintage Ford Model A that I stumbled upon on my travels. I used a handheld light to illuminate the car and capture its mysterious aura during this long exposure photo. I used some warm white light, but the darkness and strange red light on the headlights and windshield lend an extra touch of intrigue and mystery. I hope you like it. There was a High Wind Advisory this particular evening. While I went to talk to someone for a minute, a gust of wind over 45 mph blew over my Nikon D750. It's not really night photography unless you have some of these mishaps, I suppose. I chose to photograph indoors for a while with my other camera.
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For photos, books, workshops and more: www.kenleephotography.com (including vintage vehicles)
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(Plate 9358) Pentax K-1/15-30mm f/2.8 lens. 117 seconds f/8 ISO 200. April 2023.
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#kenlee #nightphotography #lightpainting #YourShotPhotographer #mojave #mylensrental #nightportraits #nightscaper #urbex #urbanexploration #ford #ModelA

Palm tree.

#canon #canona1 #canonphotography #kodak #kodakgold #kodakgold200 #35mm #35mmfilm #analogfilm #filmtomania #filmisnotdead #filmphotography #colorphotography #travelphotography #roadtrip #usa #california #mojave

If you're out in the middle of the Mojave, you may not want to be camping (or driving through) in a dry riverbed about now.

#CAwx #Mojave #flashflood #Baker #Kelso

https://alerts-v2.weather.gov/search?id=urn%3Aoid%3A2.49.0.1.840.0.73bd46bfcfc734104c8107d5ba3008e770ee9b3e.001.1

#PhotoOfTheDay A large, roughly rounded boulder (sandstone?) is balanced somewhat precariously on a large rock formation, along the Mojave Road.

#photo #photography #mojave #desert #california #overland #offroad #4x4 #RoadTrip

In the foreground, a sandstone-looking boulder balances precariously atop of a rock formation. Behind it the Mojave desert stretches out to low mountains in the distance.

Nopal, blossoming potato plants, and salt deposits in the soil.

Our water is highly saline - and it's a predicament. We cannot get any plants established without irrigation, and the mesquites in particular are critical for bringing back soil fertility. Even though all of the water we irrigate with goes through a filter, the TDS is still around 1100 from the hose - that's brackish. Our drinking water is filtered again through a 14-stage filter with a reverse osmosis stage, and so is pure, but such a filter big enough to handle the whole property is an enormous expense. There are manual ways to desalinate water, and we are going to try some methods, but it is unlikely that that will meet our needs for the immediate future.

So.. why? Why should we bother? Should humans even live in such an environment? Shouldn't we give up and move on?

Well, with something like 150,000 hectares of land becoming desert each year, it feels important to find ways to solve these problems. We can run from them, but they will find us.

One solution I'm going to try is to plant saltbrush (which is native and abundant on our property, though most has shed its green to manage through drought) near everything we're irrigating. Mulching with straw also helps, as the straw ends up with the salt, not the soil, though I imagine the salt makes its way to the soil eventually as the straw (very, very) slowly breaks down into the basin - though there are ways we could mitigate this (feeding the straw to donkeys is one potential future solution). Saltbrush takes in the salt, capturing it in its leaves, according to one source. Research on non-charismatic desert species is minimal, and so I have yet to find any specific information on what happens next. However, building on the source I found that mentions saltbrush as being high value forage, and knowing that most livestock need supplemental salt, I'm interested in testing the hypothesis that if we plant saltbrush in strategic locations, and then periodically harvest and feed it to livestock, the salt will then be utilized by the animal and not be directly put back into the soil. Obviously salt will be freely available, still, to all future livestock, but my hypothesis is that they would need less supplemental salt if they were ingesting it in their forage/feed.

It makes me curious about ecological roles: salt-loving native plants are endemic (at least, as far as I know now) to regions where bighorn sheep and mule deer once roamed: species which would, in theory, also need salt in their diet. While the groundwater the plants were accessing with deep taproots would have been theoretically less saline before the water table was disrupted by human use, concentrating the mineral content, it is likely it has always had some salt content, the water in our aquifers being trapped water from an ancient sea. Could the ecosystem be protecting soil structure through symbiosis with salt-loving plants and herbivores who otherwise have few native sources of salt in their diet?

#Ecology #Ecosystems #Soil #Mojave #DesertRegeneration #Landwork

A prickly pear cactus grows from sandy soil with evident salt deposits from irrigation. Blossoming potato plants grow in the guild with an out of frame mesquite. Straw covers much of the basin.

This is the kind of thing your model detects while conducting #drone/ #ai surveys for the #mojave desert #tortoise in a wildland/urban interface.

#dronesforgood

#PhotoOfTheDay Distant city lights illuminate the dark sky behind a low ridge, while camping along the Mojave Road in the SoCal deserts.

#photo #photography #desert #Mojave #overlanding #offroad #4x4 #camping

In the darkness there are starts in the sky as well as a golden glow that illuminates the outline of a low ridge.

#PhotoOfTheDay is my friend Anthony's Land Cruiser blasting through the trickle of water under the Afton Canyon railroad bridge, Mojave Road.

#photo #photography #MojaveRoad #Mojave #RoadTrip #Overland #4x4 #offroad #desert

With a rail bridge looming close by, a white Toyota Land Cruiser FJ80 blasts through a stream of water on a dirt trail in the desert.

The ranch this evening.

Just finished reading Sepp Holzer's "Desert or Paradise" and am currently reading "Desert and Dryland Restoration" by Bainbridge. Both extremely informative and inspiring - we have plans to make adjustments to some of our upcoming plans and existing methodologies. Hopefully more on this soon.

Today I harvested our first mature potato plant - I'll be saving all of the potatoes to sprout and replant come monsoon season. I anticipate legitimate rains this year - California is on a four year cycle, and while we've gotten rain at odd times the past few years this year feels a likely candidate for a flood year. Technically this is year three, not year four, but I just have a hunch.

#Mojave #DesertRestoration #RegenerativeAg #Permaculture #Gardening #Sunset

The sun sets, brilliantly casting gold and orange through wispy gathering clouds over a sparse desert landscape. The midground is creosote and a handful of immature date palms only about four feet high, the foreground, though, is a pathway between a mature (left) and immature (right) mesquite tree. A tub sits in a basin at the root of the mature mesquite. Lots of nopales and other plants are visible, mulched with straw.

Long Ago on Corvan II
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I love this scene of a vintage truck, most likely a 1928 Dodge Brothers work truck, and an old gravity pump in the desert night. To create this night photo, I set the camera on a tripod. I opened the camera shutter for a long time. While the shutter was open, I walked around with a handheld flashlight capable of producing different colors and illuminated the subject with warm white and red light to enhance the mystique during the exposure. During the exposure, all the light I shined on the subject was cumulative. This process is called "light painting". Why? Because one uses the flashlight as a paint brush, "brushing" on light, not paint. Light painting to illuminate subjects is a beautiful, addictive art, as you can walk around the scene, deciding what to bring to light and what to keep in shadow. And it's more fun than AI-generated images.
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For photos, books, workshops and more: www.kenleephotography.com
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(Plate 9421) Pentax K-1/28-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. 2 minutes f/8 ISO 200. April 2023.
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#kenlee #nightphotography #lightpainting #YourShotPhotographer #mojave #mylensrental #nightportraits #astrophotography #universetoday #astrophoto #nightsky #nightscaper #starphotography #landscape_nightscape #igsouthwest #divine_deserts #splendid_earth #instagood #beautifuldestinations #urbex #urbanexploration #gravitypump #vintageautomobile #Dodge

Our May newsletter just went out, a practical guide to building infrastructure in consideration of the whole.

However you seek to do better in your world: create a compost scheme, set up solar, raise your own animals, build out a garden, or rework your home to be more efficient, this newsletter is a guide to designing your systems better.

https://rancholibertad.com/in-consideration-of-the-whole/

If you have any tips to add, feel free to leave a comment, and if you find it useful consider sharing with a friend. Paid subscribers are one way we seek to keep the Ranch afloat, so every share and dollar really counts.

Thank you all ~

#ClimateChange #DirectAction #RegenerativeAg #SystemDesign #EcoInfrastructure #CommunityDevelopment #RanchoDeLaLibertad #Regeneration #Mojave #SouthernCalifornia #JoshuaTree

Almost Home
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I love beautiful nights in the desert, and this one certainly was. A cool breeze, a full moon rising in back of me, and the last glow of the setting sun to the west. The second I stepped out of the car, I was transfixed by the beauty of it all and knew this would be the first photo. This is an old farmhouse with vines on the left and a large back area for horses and chickens, located near a mine. Also, the farmhouse reminds me of one of those "kit" homes of the sort that Sears used to sell. Illuminated during the exposure by a full moon and a handheld ProtoMachines LED2 light painting device.
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Photos, books, workshops: www.kenleephotography.com
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(Plate 5419) Pentax K-1/15-30mm f/2.8 lens. 15 minutes total "stacked." Each individual photo 3 minutes f/8 ISO 200. September 2021.
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#kenlee #nightphotography #lightpainting #YourShotPhotographer #mojave #mylensrental #nightportraits #astrophotography #astrophoto #nightsky #nightscaper #starphotography #landscape_nightscape #urbex #urbanexploration #mojavedesert #miningcamp #humanmade #ShootPentax #Pentax #PentaxK1

5⭐ Amboy Crater, Mojave Desert CA
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/05/amboy-crater-mojave-desert-ca.html
A rare opportunity to explore a well-preserved volcanic cinder cone in the eastern Mojave Desert.

#Hiking #California #Trails #Mojave #NPS #Volcano #Desert #Outdoors #Nature #Geology #Blog #Map #Landscape #LandscapePhotography #HikingAdventures

A person wearing a red shirt and carrying a black backpack walks along a rocky path in a desert environment. The path, surrounded by dark rocks, leads directly to a prominent volcanic crater visible in the foreground. Sparse desert plants are scattered across the rugged terrain, and the sky above is clear with faint wispy clouds. The focus of the scene is the striking crater, which dominates the landscape ahead.

The company with the world’s largest aircraft now has a hypersonic rocket plane https://arstechni.ca/2wJYz #Vandenbergspaceforcebase #hypersonicvehicles #stratolaunch #ursamajor #Mojave #Space

5⭐ Kelso Dunes, Mojave Desert CA
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/05/kelso-dunes-mojave-desert-ca.html
The Kelso Dunes tower impressively in the eastern Mojave Desert, forming the second-tallest dune system in California. There are no half measures on this hike - be sure to climb all the way to the top!

#California #Mojave #Desert #Hiking #Outdoors #Nature #Photography #iPhonePhotography #Southwest #Trails #NPS #Dunes #Landscape #LandscapePhotography

#mojave

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