Studying desert environments for water conservation

If you could time travel, when and where would you go? 

The Pleistocene, 10 to 12,000 years ago, when there was megafauna in North America. 

What is your favorite color combination?

Probably in Arizona, the sunset. It’s nice and dynamic. It’s so beautiful, and you just don't see that anywhere else. 

What is the number one thing on your bucket list?

Visit all of the national parks!

What brought you to the University of Arizona for your education? 

I was awarded a scholarship in high school to participate in what was called the Achieving Science Education program. It was a partnership with Pima Community College, and it was two years at Pima Community College and then I transferred to one of the state schools for Arizona. I’m a Tucson native so I would stay home and be close to family and save some money. 

What was it that got you into research?

I was planning to work with elephants at some point in my life, or just large, beautiful, charismatic species, which, as we'll learn, has shifted. 

But I met somebody at one of my jobs when I was a teenager who worked with them and said, ‘hey, get a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.’ On this path to work with large, charismatic animals, I went to Alaska for an internship at a wildlife conservation center. There I met somebody from the University of Arizona who had just finished their master's degree, and they said, ‘hey, you need to take this conservation biology class. I even have the book.’  So, I took conservation biology and met a couple of fantastic researchers.

I had worked at BIO5 as an undergraduate with Taylor Edwards on the conservation of tortoises.  He's great and a fantastic mentor.  And then I also worked with somebody named Catherine Hulshof, who was part of Brian Enquist lab in the U of A Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I mean, tortoises are charismatic animals, so that was cool. I was working with Bolson tortoises, which are part of licensing rewilding, which is really interesting in this area. And so that brought me to research.

It answers my next question too, is that what brought you to the BIO5 Institute? 

BIO5 is just a cool institution, I think there's just a lot here, and it shifted my research to plants and soils. So, still charismatic! Microbes are cool, plants are awesome. I joined BIO5 with Laura Meredith, part of the ecosystem genomics cluster housed in BIO5.

When did you decide that you wanted to pursue a scientific career? 

When I had the opportunity to start asking questions, right? I got the questions bug and started going through the scientific method, and realizing, ‘hey, look, anybody can do this.’ 

I got to travel, too. The cool thing about working with plants is that they stay still, and you come to them, right? I had to travel to a lot of places to see cool diversity, and I'm passionate about diversity, so that helped drive home the pursuit of a scientific career. 

Did you ever have a second plan, or was becoming a researcher always your number one goal?

I completed what was called a teaching science program which is like secondary education for science majors and tries to prepare you for a career teaching anywhere from middle school and high school students, and my focus there was biology. I thought about pursuing that career for a while.

You're a mentor in your lab. Was there a pivotal moment in your career or during your education that helped to shape your future?

I think it's that experience of how small the world can be. It was amazing in Alaska, I ran into somebody that had just finished their degree at the University of Arizona. I got some recommendations and felt like that connected me with the right people.

You work in the lab of Dr. Laura Meredith, working on soil and plants. Tell us a little bit more about that?

Laura Meredith was hired with the U of A School of Natural Resources and the Environment as part of this ecosystem genomics initiative, and it was a push to bring together diverse disciplines that are trying to map ecological processes from genes to large-scale atmospheric climate change. 

Dr. Meredith’s work focuses on the interface between the soils and the atmosphere. What's happening, what gasses and microbes are present in the soils, what is consuming and producing, and what does that exchange look like with consideration of climate change, droughts, and water availability? 

What got you from animals to the soil and plants? 

Dr. Catherine Hulshof gave a presentation in conservation biology about plant functional traits, and she did a lot of work here. She was a graduate student at the time, and then she was looking for students to help her in the lab, gain some experience, and I reached out and started working with her. I had the opportunity to travel and see cool places like Costa Rica, work in the forest there, and develop my own research questions. Then it turned to plants!

What would you say is the favorite part of working in Dr. Meredith's lab?

Facilitating research, mentoring, and integration of science and education through mentorship is huge. It's my favorite part: working with students, and inspiring them to figure out their path in science.

Can you share any recent, exciting discoveries or breakthroughs that the lab has had?

One of the cool projects that I am leading with others in different departments across campus and with Arizona State University in Phoenix is looking at slow water practices for plants. How can we reduce the amount of water that's required to establish trees? And one of the cool things we're seeing is that we cut the amount of water the trees were getting right off the bat in a cool, controlled experiment at the U of A Campus Agricultural Center, and found that they do great. Not all the species do great, but the species that are pretty commonly used throughout the urban landscape do pretty well when we can reduce their water consumption. We're showing some cool results there, and so far, it's been about a year since they've been planted. 

Is there any possibility you can share one or two kinds of trees? 

There's ironwood, which is a common staple and native to this region, and also canyon hackberry, which is more of a smaller stature tree, and desert willow. 

Desert willows are beautiful. Their flowers are so pretty. The one that has been doing well and does require more water from what we're seeing, is oak species. Oaks are also pretty commonly planted throughout the area. They're beautiful when they are established, but during that establishment, they require more water initially. The oak that we are looking at here is not native to the area, but it is supposed to be drought tolerant. 

Within the constructs of the lab, is it common for lab members to own their own research projects, in addition to assisting with the larger goals of the lab?

Definitely, and I think that varies from lab to lab, but for the most part, you are leading the research and part of the entire research process. The development and designing of experiments, collecting those data and analyzing it, and then communicating and interpreting those results. There's a level of ownership that's part of it.

Is there a project that you own in particular that you can tell us about? 

Within the Meredith lab, I lead all of the rainwater harvestings, green stormwater infrastructure, sustainable development, and nature-based solutions research and projects that are part of that look at soil and plant health with respect to urban designs. 

When we manage water in our landscape, how does it impact soil health, and how can we support vegetation with reduced or just conservative approaches for watering? Because we're a water-limited environment, it's really important to make sure that we aren't wasting our precious portable water sources on the vegetation outside. 

Vegetation is so critical to our landscape, and it has a huge cooling effect in the urban area, so we need vegetation to help reduce some of the effects of heat island, which are just basically saying that because of all of our built landscape, all of the energy production, all of the concrete and asphalt surfaces, produce a lot of heat. So how can we help reduce some of that? Vegetation has been shown to help mitigate some of that heat. But because we're water-limited, you know, that's kind of a double-edged sword. We need these trees, but we also need the water to help with establishment. Can we use that water strategically to make sure that we have the vegetation to help cool the climate or to cool the environment? 

Has this topic been something that you've always been interested in, or did you discover this and then decide this is what you wanted to research in the lab?

I think it's a combination. Part of the interest that I had going into the Brian Enquist lab and working with Catherine Hulshof was looking at the impacts of disturbance and land management on plant performance, and we measure that through different attributes and characteristics of plants, such as the leaf size, and the density of the wood. We look at these plant functional traits. They have some kind of benefit to the reproduction and success of the plants. And I wanted to look at that locally, so I had hoped to collaborate and work with some of the developers around the town to see how things changed over time.

Something cool was that while I wasn't able to do it locally—which is where my heart is at—I was able to do that work in Costa Rica. I worked with people there around disturbance and impacts on the landscape and how these plants may function as they re-establish in previously disturbed areas. 

When I moved into the Meredith lab—she's from a wetter climate—and she was intrigued by the water harvesting work being done. What's neat is there's an experiment in her backyard to look at the impacts of water harvesting on soil. It was a cool opportunity to build up from there and bring it into an urban setting and think about this from the plant, soil, and water continuum.

Living in Tucson, as long as you have and being a native, did that inspire your research in any way? 

I think so. During the water crisis of the 80s and 90s, where the city started sinking because we were pulling too much water from groundwater sources, there was a shift in how we can manage the surface water in a way that benefits the landscape. 

The county started putting in low-impact development, which is like other larger forms of water management systems to direct and store water locally instead of putting it into drainage systems, like you would at sea. Our drainage systems are primarily roads, but there are some drains. Imagine systems for stormwater capture that push water out of the city center into areas where that water is treated and reused. 

I feel like I was in college during a time where a lot of that work started to develop from a grassroots and bottom-up perspective as well. There were a lot of other groups within Tucson nonprofits that started to develop and have become leaders in this work, and with the addition of the City of Tucson Storm to Shade program and the Million Tree Project, there's been just a lot of inertia around it. I've just grasped onto that momentum. How can I study the system, and is it restoring natural ecosystem processes? Because that's where my interests lie.

What would you say is the most sustainable town or city in Arizona? 

I'm biased because I like Tucson and it’s doing a lot of work, right? I feel like they have been leading the way for desert systems with regard to things like water management. 

Going back to that Alaska comment, there were a lot of people from all over the U.S. there that only learned later in life to turn off the water when they brush their teeth, or to have those ingrained water practices that I grew up with. It's funny because it wasn't the mentality. I didn't realize that before I was exposed to it that's what we do. You save water. That's just how it is.

Can you tell me more about the Ecology of Water Harvesting course that you teach, and the collaboration with the landscape architecture course at the College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture (CAPLA) that has national awards?

The Ecology of Water Harvesting was based on funding for collaboration with Boeing in CAPLA. It was to integrate research between these fields. 

We have people who are building the system, and then we have people who want to understand the system, and oftentimes they're working in their own silos. This was an opportunity to bridge that gap and say how are you designing this and how is it functioning from an ecological perspective? 

Landscape architects do a lot of that work also, but I think with the Ecology of Water Harvesting course, students with backgrounds in the natural sciences were able to come in and provide their expertise and gain new experience because of these grand challenges. They have to integrate research across disciplines. We can't continue to work in silos. 

It was an opportunity to bridge that and to allow students a new perspective, because being in the natural sciences within the university, I quickly recognized that I wasn't getting exposed to a lot of the arts and other fields that may have given me a different perspective and inspiration. One of the things that one of the students mentioned was how interesting it was to watch the landscape architect students work through processes, the creative perspectives that they held, and the way they communicated that creativity. That student mentioned that it was exciting to be able to see that process and see that creativity, and then dive into some of that themselves,

You mentioned that this course is no longer being offered, is that right?

Yes, unfortunately the course is no longer being offered. We were hoping to be able to build on it and have it become part of the curriculum for the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, but it was absorbed into some of these other courses.

From this work, we continued the collaborations. Part of the cool part is that with that module that was built and these collaborative course integrations for the ecology of water harvesting, and then the studio design course, it also reached into a green stormwater infrastructure course that's taught by Grant McCormick, and at the time, Tanya Quest as well. It bridged a larger group of people in the university to share ideas and inspire students. 

Then the students ran with it. They created some great ideas on how we can change the university landscape to be more sustainable, to keep the water locally, and to be more engaging and inviting to students. One of the ideas that we tossed around with that is, can we create kind of a living lab? Can we monitor research? Can we build structures that have dual purposes, that engage with the public, and have interpretive signage that talks about green stormwater infrastructure and rainwater harvesting? There are over 100 features on campus right now that you may not even be aware of, because it looks just like dirt and some rocks and maybe a few plants. But if you understand, there's a gutter system that's running in downspout that goes into an area that stores it, but that storage of that water and that capture allows it to slow down and infiltrate, becoming available for plants.

Does this have an official name to it?

It’s turned into the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Campus Living Lab, and so we've moved towards installing monitoring systems for soil and atmosphere at three locations on campus, and soon enough, they'll have signage for interpretation and interaction for the general public so that they point to the functioning of that landscape.

The project has a website, I noticed on there, you can click a button and it says live data, and it will take you to those three live data from each of those monitoring systems. 

That dashboard was created with the University of Arizona Communications & Cybertechnologies Data Science Team. We collaborated with them to create a dashboard for interaction with the data that's being collected so that you don't have to try and download data and map it out yourself. You can visualize it right away and in mostly real time. It has daily updates, and a previous BIO5 Institute’s KEYS Research Internship student was heavily involved in that once he started at the University as a freshman. 

I love that this is another example of collaboration as well, working with the Data Science team. Speaking of the BIO5 Institute’s KEYS Research Internship, you are one of our KEYS mentors, so first, thank you for doing that for our students. We've just gotten kicked off with our KEYS program this summer. How is that going so far? 

This is my first week in the lab. Yesterday, I met the KEYS students for the summer and got them set up with all the lab safety training that they needed. It’s a lot of really dense readings, and they're actually in the field. Today, they went to Maricopa Agricultural Center, where they will be working on a research project to look at volatile organic compounds and sorghum genomic varieties. They're looking at sorghum phenotypic varieties that have different growth rates, and then seeing what kinds of volatile organic compounds or VOCs are produced or consumed in the soil in response by the plants during growth over the season. So that's going to be a fun project.

For those who don't know, the KEYS program is a seven-week program that the BIO5 Institute hosts during the summer, and we bring in anywhere from 50 to 60 high school students to come in and work side by side with our labs. At the end, they can report on a scientific poster of the progress that they made on their project. So thank you for taking in one of our students. Do you have a mentor that has impacted your life?

There've been quite a few people who have impacted my life at various stages of my career and well, I feel like I already mentioned them throughout. 

What’s next for you with regard to your research?

With regard to research, it’s continuing to develop partnerships with the city, state, county, and nonprofits locally to pivot more to working directly in the communities. Collecting data is fun, yes, looking at soil processes and soil health and tree health is fun, but also having an impact on the community is important. So spending a little bit more time gaining skills in community engagement.