Piute Ponds are a group of ponds located about southeast of

Rosamond, California Rosamond is a unincorporated community in Kern County, California, US, near the Los Angeles county line. Rosamond is part of Greater Los Angeles and is located in the Mojave Desert just north of Lancaster and Palmdale, two of the largest cities ...

in the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...

, on the southwestern edge of

Edwards Air Force Base Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation in California. Most of the base sits in Kern County, but its eastern end is in San Bernardino County and a southern arm is in Los Angeles County. The hub of the base is E ...

and on the southern margin of

Rosamond Lake Rosamond Lake is a natural dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert of Kern- and Los Angeles County, California. The shores of the lake are entirely within the borders of Edwards Air Force Base, approximately from Lancaster. The lake is adjacent ...

, a dry lake bed. They form part of the Harley Berhow Recreational Area and are home to over 200 species of migratory birds.

Description

The largest remaining freshwater wetlands in

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

, the site is cited as an important bird area of California, and a resting ground for over 200 species of migratory birds such as the

great blue heron The great blue heron (''Ardea herodias'') is a large wading bird in the heron family Ardeidae, common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North America and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and the Galápagos ...

, the

great horned owl The great horned owl (''Bubo virginianus''), also known as the tiger owl (originally derived from early naturalists' description as the "winged tiger" or "tiger of the air"), or the hoot owl, is a large owl native to the Americas. It is an extrem ...

, the

black-crowned night heron The black-crowned night heron (''Nycticorax nycticorax''), or black-capped night heron, commonly shortened to just night heron in Eurasia, is a medium-sized heron found throughout a large part of the world, including parts of Europe, Asia, and N ...

, and the

western snowy plover The western snowy plover (''Charadrius nivosus nivosus'') is a small wader in the plover bird family. It breeds in the southern and western United States and the Caribbean. On March 5, 1993, the western snowy plover was listed as a threatened s ...

. The area covers an area of about and contains a number of

claypan Claypan is a dense, compact, slowly permeable layer in the subsoil. It has a much higher clay content than the overlying material, from which it is separated by a sharply defined boundary. The dense structure restricts root growth and water infiltra ...

ponds such as Big Piute, Little Piute, Teal Pond, Ducks Unlimited Pond and Amargosa Creek and several other smaller ponds, creeks, and low sand dunes. A dike created the ponds, and they are maintained by treated reclaimed water pumped from Lancaster’s sewage treatment plant, with channels augmenting the ponds into two principal sets of large ponds. Some of wetlands were added to the complex of marshes in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Restricted hunting is permitted with a license in the fall, and the Piute Ponds Tour is conducted for tourists and bird enthusiasts.

Studies

The Piute Ponds have been studied extensively by ornithologists such as

Kimball Garrett Kimball may refer to: People *Kimball (surname) * Kimball (given name) Places Canada * Kimball, Alberta United States * Kellogg, Iowa, formerly known as Kimball * Kimball, Kansas * Kimball, Minnesota * Kimball, Nebraska, a city * Kimball, ...

who collected data here over many years. Studies conducted in the late 1990s estimated that the marshes of Piute were home to over 150,000 frogs. In 1990, vertebrate fossils were unearthed from

lacustrine A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

silts and sands at the site. The Mojave Environmental Education Consortium (MEEC) provides education kits for children for field studies in the ponds, with a night sounds CD, casting kits, owl pellet kits, a field press and dryers, magnifying glasses, vials, and microscopes and other equipment.

References

External links

Official siteSite mapSatellite images
{{authority control Rosamond, California Lakes of Los Angeles County, California Edwards Air Force Base Lakes of the Mojave Desert Wetlands and marshes of Los Angeles County, California Lakes of California Landforms of Los Angeles County, California Lakes of Southern California