Agave: Plant found at Red Rock Canyon and used as a food staple by the Native Americans who lived there.
Algae: Primitive green plants. Many are microscopic.
Annual: A plant which completes its life cycle from seedling to mature plant in a single growing season and then dies.
Aquatic Plant: A plant that must live partly or entirely in water for at least part of its life cycle.
Biotic: Refers to living componets of the environment.
Cactus: A plant with fleshy stems and branches with scales or spines instead of leaves.
Carnivore: An animal or plant that uses animals as a food source.
Community: All the plants and animals in a particular habitat that are bound together by food and other interactions that are self-perpetuating.
Conifer: An evergreen tree that has needles for leaves and bears fruits in the form of cones.
Competition: An interaction between members of the same population or two populations resulting from a greater demand than supply for a mutually required resource.
Condensation: Changing water from vapor to the liquid form. An important part of the hydrologic cycle.
Cultural Resource: Fragile and non-renewable remains of human activity, occupation, and endeavore as reflected in works of art, architecture, and natural features that were of importance in human events and documentation.
Deciduous: A plant, including trees, which sheds allof its leaves every year at a certain season.
Desert: A region characterized by less than 10 inches of rain a year.
Ecology: The study of the interrelationships of organisms to one another and to the environment.
Ecosystem: The community including all the component organisms together with a biotic environment forming an interacting system.
Environment: A person's total surroundings.
Erosion: The removal and movement of particles of the land surface by wind, water, ice or earth movements such as landslides.
Fault: A fracture in the Earth's crust.
Foliage: The leaves of growing plants.
Fossils: The remains of once-living plants and animals.
Habitat: The place where an organism lives.
Herbivore: An animal that uses plants as a food source.
Hydrological Cycle: Path wath takes from precipitation until it evaporates and recondenses in cloud form back to percipitation.
Lichen: Algal and fungal plants growing together in a symbiotic relationship as an organized whole.
Limestone: A rock that is formed chiefly by accumulations of organic remains of shells or coral. The grey rock seen at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
Meadow: A tract of grassland.
Migration: To pass periodically from one region or climate to another; a common pattern among waterfowl and some mammals.
Mineral: Any substance that is neither animal nor vegetable: inorganic matter.
Multiple Use: A resource management objective based upon maximizing the total goods and services derived, as in contrast to, managing for a specific resource such as agriculture.
Midden: Rich dark soil created from a refuse pile. Often found in a cultural resource area.
Natural Elements: Parts of the environment, as In soil, water, air and sunlight.
Niche: The place occupied by a species in the community structure of which it is a part; the way in which an organism utilizes the resources of its ecosystem.
Non-Renewable Resource: A resource of infinate supply which cannot be replaced.
Omnivore: An animal that uses both plants and other animals as food sources.
Paiute: One of the Native American tribes who inhabited the Red Rock Canyon area hundreds of years ago.
Parasite: Any organism that grows, feeds and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of Its host.
Perennial: A plant which persists in whole or in part from year to year and flowers in more than one year.
Petroglyph: A cultural resource; a carving in the rocks made by Native Americans hundreds of years ago.
Photosynthesis: The process of which light energy is converted by green plants to chemical energy (food).
Pictograph: A cultural resource; a painting on the rocks made by Native Americans hundreds of years ago using plant or mineral paint.
Pinyon Pine: Small tree 20' to 40' tall with rounded crowns. Has large edible seeds. Found in semi-arid regions of the west, they are typical of dry rocky or gravelly soils. State tree of Nevada.
Pinyon Nut: The edible seed of the Pinyon pine tree. A food staple of the Native Americans who inhabited RRCNCA hundreds of years ago.
Precipitation: Water which reaches the ground from the atmosphere as a result of condensation; includes rain, sleet, snow, etc.
Predation: A population interaction in which one organism (predator) kills and eats another organism (prey).
Resources: Biologically, everything of natural origin, living and non-living, which humans use and enjoy.
Roasting Pit: A cultural resource found in Red Rock Canyon used by the Native Americans for cooking. The heating source was limestone rock . Recognized by its doughnut shape and piles of limestone.
Rush: A grasslike marsh plant that has a round, hollow stem.
Sandstone: A rock type composed predominantly of small quartz grains cemented by iron oxide, lime, silica or other materials.
Site: An area inhabited by humans. A type of cultural resource.
Succession: A gradual replacement of one community by another.
Tinaja: An indentation in the sandstone forming a natural water collector or tank.
Terrestrial: Something or someone who lives on land, relates to terrain.
Wash: A river bed created by flash floods. Fills with water forming a strong current after a heavy rainfall.
Watershed: All the area draining into a stream.
Weathering: The chemical decomposition and mechanical disintegration ofrock.
Wilderness: Generally uncultivated and undeveloped land. Usually the connotation is that the land is in pristine condition.
Yucca: A plant found in Red Rock Canyon that will stab, stick or sting you.