Chelsea Scott is an Assistant Research Professor at Arizona State University, where she studies natural hazards such as earthquakes and wildfires. She leverages remote sensing data to capture changes in the Earth’s landscape over time, using these observations to investigate the physical processes that drive these hazards.

Photographer Charles Darr
Born in the Maryvale neighborhood of Phoenix, Darr has spent his entire life in the Valley, exploring the surrounding Sonoran Desert. He is a professional photographer who currently teaches a course at Arizona State University that focuses on using photography as a tool for mindfulness and awareness of sustainability challenges. Over the past year, while collecting scans and photographs throughout the desert for this project, Darr gained unique insight into the complexity of ecological issues facing us in the Anthropocene.

Raul Puente divides his time at Desert Botanical Garden as the Curator of Living Collections and as a Research Botanist. He is responsible for curatorial aspects such as plant acquisition, maintaining the database and mapping of the Garden’s Living Collection. His main research interest has been the systematics of the genus Opuntia (prickly pears) in northern Mexico, particularly in the states of San Luis Potosi, Coahuila and Sonora. His studies are based on fieldwork as well as morphology, chromosome numbers and pollen morphology, among other techniques. As a collaborator for the Vascular Plants of Arizona project, he has written various family treatments and made a number of plant illustrations.