The Dome Fire Killed an Estimated 1.3 Million Joshua Trees: Mojave Notes, Spring 2021

The Oasis is the twice-yearly newsletter of the National Park Service’s Mojave Desert Network (MOJN) Inventory and Monitoring Program, which runs long-term monitoring in seven national parks and monuments. Its spring 2021 issue led with a disaster in Mojave National Preserve.

The Dome Fire

In August 2020, lightning started a fire in a wilderness area of the preserve. The Dome Fire raced through Joshua tree woodland, killing an estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees, along with many other cacti, shrubs and smaller plants.

The Dome Fire crossing Cima Road, August 16, 2020. NPS / JT Sohr.

• August 15: the fire was reported while many other fires burned across California. Requests for aircraft, engines and extra crews were denied — fires in populated areas threatened homes, businesses and infrastructure, so a fire in desert wilderness ranked lower. A local crew responded at once, sized up the fire and began protecting historic structures.
• August 16: under extreme conditions the fire spread fast. A convection column rose above it and collapsed, sending out downdrafts and fire whirls. That day brought the greatest losses of natural and cultural resources, though no firefighters or evacuated residents were hurt.
• August 17: an interagency team arrived and more resources followed. By containment, the fire had burned 43,273 acres.

Many desert plants re-seed or re-sprout after fire, but few Joshua trees are likely to recover: the fire fully scorched most vegetation in the burn area. A Joshua tree whose top third of crown escaped burning may survive; a fully scorched tree dies.

Joshua tree and Mojave yucca skeletons on Cima Dome. NPS / Barbara Michel.

What comes next

Some plants may still have living roots and could re-sprout with rain and time, while the seeds of many other species compete for scarce resources. The great danger is invasive grasses such as red brome (Bromus rubens). After severe fires elsewhere in the desert Southwest, they have grown in thick, filling the spaces between shrubs and cacti with continuous fuel, then regrowing after each fire — a fire–grass cycle of larger, more frequent fires.

Preserve staff monitor how native and non-native plants interact and are preparing direct seeding, transplanting and herbicide treatments in case they are needed. They hope the area will become a Joshua tree–grassland savanna — scattered Joshua trees or junipers with native shrubs and bunchgrasses between — but only if the land does not burn again.

The network monitors two springs inside the burn area, with a return visit planned for early 2022. Physical scientist Jennifer Bailard noted that both springs had wooden structures helping water reach the surface; if those burned, the water may emerge elsewhere, flow less or not surface at all. Both were small to begin with — at most 15 meters of spring brook on winter visits.

Clarice Wheeler selects small aquatic invertebrates from a sample of water from Travertine Spring in Death Valley National Park. NPS / Jennette Jurado.

Bringing park staff into the field

Because the network works across seven parks, its staff rarely meet park employees — especially in the past year. So they reached out to interpreters and social media teams at Death Valley, Joshua Tree and Lake Mead:

• Visit flyers, colorful one-page previews of each multi-day monitoring trip, went to park interpreters ahead of time — and staff from Death Valley and Joshua Tree joined desert springs and vegetation crews in the field.
• A Joshua Tree videographer filmed a three-minute video, Why Monitor Desert Springs?, on how springs are monitored and why they matter to desert plants and animals.
• The network aims for one or two posts a week on Facebook and Instagram, where it had 1,866 and 3,724 followers. When Joshua Tree shared its posts, their reach jumped from hundreds of people to over 10,000.
• At Lake Mead’s Junior Ranger Day on April 24, the network’s “bug booth” let children look at springsnails under a microscope and hunt for water creatures in sample trays.

The Mojave Desert Network bug booth at the Lake Mead Junior Ranger Day got a lot of attention from attending children. NPS / Allen Calvert.

Videographer Peri Sasnett films MOJN Physical Science Technician Logan Combs in Joshua Tree National Park for the "Why Monitor Desert Springs?" video. NPS / Marisa Monroe.

Physical scientist Jennifer Bailard filters a water sample at Travertine Spring, Death Valley National Park. NPS photo / Jennette Jurado.

Sources

Based on "The Oasis Newsletter: Spring 2021," Mojave Desert Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, National Park Service, whose Dome Fire article was adapted from Mojave National Preserve’s own page; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The issue’s staff news is left out. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.