A new paper tries to break down the smell of summer rain in the Sonoran Desert.
Henry Brean With the first, fat drops of summer rain, the sun-bleached desert exhales a perfumed breath of pure relief.There’s a lot more to it than just wet earth and creosote bush.
People are also reading… Even the scientific word for the earthy smell of rain on dry ground is tinged with reverence: Australian biochemist Richard Grenfell Thomas coined the term “petrichor” in 1964 by combining the ancient Greek words for stone and the ethereal fluid from the veins of the gods. The new paper represents a return to familiar territory for Nabhan, who borrowed a phrase from a Tohono O’Odham boy for the title of his first book: “The Desert Smells Like Rain.”“I feel so hilariously geeky to be doing this,” he said with a laugh.
According to the paper, dozens of scientific studies have documented real health benefits from simply walking along a wooded path and taking in the aromas of certain plants and living soils, a practice known in Japan as “forest bathing.” For a long time, Nabhan said, experts seemed to be split into two camps: those who credited creosote bushes alone for the smell of rain, and others who believed it wafted up from the dirt itself – namely from biological soil crusts formed by highly specialized mosses, lichens and photosynthetic bacteria.
Nabhan said he worried that studying the phenomenon might take some of the wonder out of it. After all, desert rain is one of life’s simple pleasures, he said. “We don’t have to analyze it to enjoy it.”
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