“…Wreaking a different sort of havoc on natural systems, schemes to green the desert also represent a form of violencealbeit in ways that their proponents more easily deflect through harnessing the spectacle of transforming the ostensibly "barren" into something "productive" (Koch, 2015(Koch, , 2019Molle & Floch, 2008;Trottier et al, 2020). Indeed, as many scholars have shown, western expansion of the USA was underpinned by efforts to both map the territory and to "conquer" it by bringing it under cultivation (Akhter & Ormerod, 2015;Blackhawk, 2006;Burtner, 2012;Conrad, 2014;Curley, 2019;Evans, 2017;Frymer, 2017;Isenberg & Kessler, 2017;Isenberg et al, 2019;Knobloch, 1996;Meeks, 2007;Morrissey & Burtner, 2019;Sayre, 2017;Smith, 1950;Teisch, 2011;VanderMeer, 2010;Worster, 1985). 3 Settler colonial ideals of Jeffersonian agrarianism historically framed the desert landscapes of the West as a serious challenge to the civilising mission of American expansion.…”