Media Category: Sites

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