Media Category: CAP

CAP and Sevilleta students explore Sonoran Desert vegetation while hiking at South Mountain Preserve, a CAP long-term research site.

Poster presentations.

Students present posters at the CAP ASM. Presenters: top left – Tim Ohlert, top right – Aaron Grade, bottom left – Nich Weller, bottom right – Kate Weiss.

SESE graduate student Marisol Juarez Rivera describes her poster, “Is oxygen supersaturation in Tempe Town Lake mainly driven by abiotic processes?”

CAP and Sevilleta students at South Mountain Preserve, with the city of Phoenix in the background.

At Sycamore Creek, Marina is looking at the functional traits of Typha domingensis and Paspalum distichum (cattail and knotgrass) in response to water availability and plant stress. Marina Lauck, CAP LTER

Marina with supervisor Dr. Nancy Grimm and lab mates at one of their Arizona field sites. CAP LTER

CAP LTER

In the Phoenix metropolitan area neighborhoods there are three popular types of landscaping, (1) mesic, consisting of lawn and trees, (2) xeric, consisting of desert- and drought-adapted plants, and (3) oasis, landscaping that combines the grassy swaths of mesic and desert plants of xeric. ARC LTER researchers found that after the socioeconomic stress of the Great Recession, plant species richness of residential yards increased (LEFT) due to a surge in weedy annual species, which corresponded with a simultaneous increase in homogeneity (RIGHT) of residential plant communities. Julie Ripplinger

Former student Jessica Alvarez Guevara doing her population survey of small mammals inside/outside urban Phoenix. She was letting the pocket mouse warm up from her body heat before releasing him so that he wouldn’t be a target for predators. Becky Ball