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OK, I'll take a guess at this and I'll go right back to NM. You could check out the Alamagorda area because I saw it in a movie and it looks hilly and lush and full of trees. I'm not sure if it has a semi-arid climate like a lot of the state does, but it'd be worth looking at.
A "desert with green forests" is an oxymoron. A desert is defined as an area where the rainfall is insufficient to support vegetation. Even semi-arid or prairie areas are defined as places with too little water for trees but enough for grasses and some shrubs. The best you can hope for is some place where rain is seasonal, so that the trees can grow and store up moisture during the wet season and just get by during the dry season.
Also I've heard of places in Chile and Peru where rainfall is very light but trees survive by absorbing moisture directly from the air (these places are very humid). But these locations are an exception.
Are their any areas within america that have the same combination of desert climate and green forests other then the Prescott Area in Arizona?
Probably not, and even in the Prescott area those forested reegions are at high elevation and the desert climate gives way to much more humid conditions. Prescott itself has some pine and juniper but even at a relatively wet 17 inches of annual rainfall, most other trees have a hard time without human intervention.
Your best chances of finding forests in typically desert climates are in the "sky islands" that abound in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. These are isolated mountains or high plateaus that are surrounded by desert. They are relics of a time when the entire southwest was cooler and much wetter during the last ice age. Remnant forests exist here only because the high elevation wrings out what little moisture makes it this far from the pacific.
If the sky islands won't do then the best chance of wooded tracts are along permanent streams.
Salt Lake City is like this...desert-like in the valley, forests up the canyons with hundreds of inches of snow each year in the mountains. It is extremely difficult to get a desert next to a forest without some kid of elevation change.
A "desert with green forests" is an oxymoron. A desert is defined as an area where the rainfall is insufficient to support vegetation. Even semi-arid or prairie areas are defined as places with too little water for trees but enough for grasses and some shrubs. The best you can hope for is some place where rain is seasonal, so that the trees can grow and store up moisture during the wet season and just get by during the dry season.
Also I've heard of places in Chile and Peru where rainfall is very light but trees survive by absorbing moisture directly from the air (these places are very humid). But these locations are an exception.
Well, arizona is kind of special. As with many mountain ranges, Arizonas vegetation can vary greatly on just two slopes. The north facing slopes can have pine forests, while the other slope across from it can support desert vegetation. The Grand canyon proves this. Another place is sedona. Sedona is a high desert, but it gets a lot of rain, and can get very hot. Yet, at the same elevation 2 miles away, is a cool, dense, wet pine, fir, and spruce forest.
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