Mountain Islands and Desert Seas

Mountains rise like islands from deserts and grasslands along the U.S.-Mexican border. The stunningly varied borderlands offer a laboratory for studying historical trends and ecological cycles as well as a refuge in which to experience natural history firsthand. In this engaging personal narrative biologist Fred Gehlbach describes the stability and changes of the past century in the Borderlands'' climate landforms and natural communities and in its distinctive plants and vertebrates. Historical sketches maps and striking photographs richly amplify the text and a preface updates developments in the region since the book''s original publication in 1981.