At home in sand
The Mojave fringe-toed lizard is a medium sized, diurnal lizard adapted to living in sand dunes in the Mojave Desert. They can run upright on their hind legs for short distances, and can rapidly bury themselves in sand when threatened.
Research Questions
To guide our research, we developed the following questions related to utility-scale solar development on public lands in the California desert:
What are the policies and incentives driving utility-scale solar in the California desert?
- How are policy decisions and incentives driving the development of the solar industry and how do they favor either distributed generation or utility-scale solar?
- How do the policy and management incentives and disincentives at the federal, state, and local levels affect siting solar projects on public lands?
How will the different forms of solar energy development affect the ecology of the California desert?
- What are the resource and infrastructure needs of various proposed technologies?
- What are the relative land use efficiencies of each of the “fast-track” solar-energy facility proposals?
- What current stressors should be considered in order to understand the impact that utility-scale solar development might have on California desert ecosystems?
- What direct and indirect impacts of utility-scale solar development on key species, natural communities, and landscape-level ecological processes should be taken into consideration by decision makers?
Can landscape suitability and desert-wide impacts be identified and analyzed spatially?
- What areas may be in high conflict with solar development in the California desert due to land management designation?
- What areas of the desert present a high degree of conflict for building solar facilities due to known occurrences of species habitats?
- What areas of the desert would be visually affected by solar development?
- How can solar facility impacts and needs be analyzed spatially given alternative development scenarios?
How will solar development affect desert residents, and are their opinions and information gaps being addressed?
- What are the socioeconomic impacts of utility-scale solar facilities?
- How can demographic data and facility location be used to predict socioeconomic impacts?
- What are the socioeconomic impacts of existing utility-scale solar facilities and how might the impacts of future facilities be similar and/or different?
- How do existing communities view proposed solar developments?
- What are the knowledge gaps for local stakeholders?
- What sources of information do stakeholders use?
- What are the perceived types and likelihoods of a range of impacts?
How are decisions being made in the solar energy siting process?
- What is the current process for siting solar facilities on public lands?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the process?
- Are local stakeholders aware of and using BLM public commenting opportunities?
- What aspects of existing alternative processes would be beneficial for the solar siting process?
What changes and improvements can be adopted to more effectively site solar facilities with minimal ecological impact?
- How should the current solar siting process be changed and improved?
- What mitigation and design measures can developers take to reduce the ecological impacts of utility-scale solar development on the California desert?