Research & Horticulture Facilities
Where Science Comes to Life
Research Facilities
Hazel Hare Center for Plant Science
Where plants are grown, studied and protected.
Ahearn Desert Conservation Laboratory
Home to the Garden’s seed bank, this lab preserves more than 4,000 accessions that safeguard the diversity of rare and significant desert plants.
Laboratory of Evolutionary and Conservation Genetics
Nina Mason Pulliam Research & Horticulture Center
The RAF Exhibit Gallery
This public-facing gallery brings plant science and the desert to life through exhibitions, experiences and events.
Shade Pavilions & Greenhouse Space
Specialized shade structures and greenhouses provide controlled environments for the care, propagation and study of desert plants.
Schilling Library
This specialized collection includes more than 9,000 books, 500 journal titles, rare botanical works, art and archives supporting the study of desert plants and landscapes.
Expected Impacts
The completion of Hazel Hare Center of Plant Science will enable the Garden to not only identify and study threats to our ecosystem, but to also mitigate those threats and improve conditions for desert plant species. The capacity of these new facilities will accelerate the Garden’s efforts to cultivate and preserve flora from arid deserts in Arizona, North America and across the globe.
The Seed Lab
Seed Photography
The Seed Photography Lab documents the physical characteristics of seeds. These images capture the beauty of plants on a smaller scale and are used by botanists to help identify and differentiate closely related species for taxonomic research.
Seed Research
Through natural selection, plants have evolved mechanisms that ensure their seeds remain dormant, waiting for the ideal conditions to germinate thereby giving their seedlings the best chance to survive and grow. Our research focuses on understanding these cues needed to break dormancy in order to propagate and grow the plants for restoration or further research.
Seed Preservation
The Garden’s seed bank houses more than 4,000 accessions that act as an insurance policy for some of the most critically imperiled species. The primary focus of the collection is on the long-term conservation of Sonoran Desert species, but it also contains plant seeds from other deserts of the world. By drying, sealing and freezing the seeds to sub-zero temperatures, they can be preserved for decades or even centuries.
The Seed Lab recently received funding to propagate the federally endangered Canelo Hills ladies’ tresses orchid (Spiranthes delitescens), a very rare plant native to southern Arizona.
The Dryland Plant Ecophysiology Lab
The Dryland Plant Ecophysiology Lab studies plant ecophysiology traits that underlie adaptation to heat waves, drought and other stressors.
We use the most up-to-date approaches to study plant water relations, photosynthesis and growth to better understand how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions. We seek to identify solutions for restoring and conserving dryland forests, plant communities, and sensitive species threatened by global environmental change.
Projects
Water loss in plants has commonly been considered only as a cost of photosynthetic carbon gain. However, plants may use water in ways that may not necessarily optimize instantaneous carbon gain, but instead as a strategy for leaf evaporative cooling.
The Dryland Plant Ecophysiology Lab and collaborators are assessing whether plant water use is not always a side effect of carbon gain, but rather an active strategy to optimize leaf temperature to cope with thermal stress that is becoming more common with climate change.
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Giant cactus are among the most charismatic and iconic plant life forms on the planet, but many giant cactus species are threatened by the effects of climate change. The Dryland Plant Ecophysiology Lab and colleagues study the distinctive physiological features of giant cactus to better understand how they cope with long term exposure to drought and heatwaves.
A wide range of investigative tools are used to evaluate how these desert sentinels function and survive under stressful climate conditions.
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Riparian forests are among the most threatened in North America as a consequence of altered hydrological conditions, invasive species and climate change.
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Meet the Team
Madeline Moran, M.S.
Ph.D. Arizona State University/Desert Botanical Garden (In progress) Huizingh Desert Research Fellowship Award
Meet the Team
Kevin Hultine (Ph.D.)
Lab Director / Plant Ecophysiologist
Lab director / Plant Ecophysiologist Hultine’s expertise involves studying how plants cope with environmental stress in desert ecosystems in urban, riparian and upland areas. He is focused on the duel effects of drought and thermal stress on plants and ecosystems in dryland regions worldwide. He applies stable isotope methods, measurements in plant water relations and measurements of plant carbon allocation and storage to improve the understanding of how desert plant systems function at multiple scales. Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=04hEUKIAAAAJ&hl=en ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9747-6037 [email protected] | phone: 480.481.8195
Susan Bush (Ph.D)
Field Ecology Program Director
Bush is a global change ecologist whose research has largely focused on fluxes of carbon and water in both urban and natural ecosystems. Her research effort has spanned scales from leaf-level gas exchange and xylem vascular hydraulics of individual plants to landscape scale investigations of water and carbon exchange with the atmosphere as impacted by anthropogenic factors (urbanization, invasive species, and climate change). Google Scholar Profile [email protected]
Madeline Moran (M.S.)
Ph.D. Arizona State University/Desert Botanical Garden (In progress) Huizingh Desert Research Fellowship Award
M.S. Plant Biology and Conservation, Arizona State University (In progress)Huizingh Desert Research Fellowship Award Moran’s background is in plant ecology/conservation and environmental education. Moran’s research interests include how plants physically respond to environmental stress, the implications of those responses within their ecosystem and finding community-based solutions to conservation issues. Currently, she is working on her masters about how the thermal tolerance of cottonwood leaves differs in varying climate conditions and how increasing temperatures might alter the efficacy of photosynthesis in these trees. Madeline Moran was recently awarded the Huizingh Desert Research Fellowship.
The award provides five years of funded to support her PhD program to study the thermal tolerance of plants exposed to heat stress. Madeline becomes the second student to receive this prestigious award. Congratulations Madeline! [email protected]
Dan Koepke (M.S.)
Senior Research Assistant
Plant Functional & Physiological Ecology Research Assistant Koepke assists lab personnel and colleagues with field and laboratory projects. His work focuses on plant hydraulics and seeks to identify morphological and physiological traits that respond to environmental stresses and how these traits are interrelated. In turn, information about trait expression improves the ability of site managers to restore ecosystems faced with environmental change. Google Scholar Profile [email protected]
Natalie Melkonoff (B.S.)
Ph.D. University of Arizona/Desert Botanical Garden (In progress)
PhD. Biology, Arizona State University/Desert Botanical Garden (In progress) Melkonoff’s work is focused on the interactions between plants and animals and how the physiological processes of both impact their interdependence on one another and their ability to thrive under different environmental stressors. She is currently working on her Ph.D. with a focus on the interactions between milkweed, monarch butterflies and pollinators in the Sonoran Desert. She also coordinates Desert Botanical Garden’s monarch and pollinator conservation initiative, Great Milkweed Grow Out. [email protected] | 480.941.3516
Ali Schussler (M.S.)
Lab Manager
Ali manages the plant physiology and molecular labs. Where she works with the traits and function of traits in desert and arid riparian plants, along with the genomics and phylogenies of agave, cactus and other desert plants. One of her personal research interests is on dark septate endophytic fungi and how they influence plants in desert and riparian systems, where these fungi are potentially aiding plant growth regulator production, nutrient and water uptake and other positive plant growth responses.
Jessica Guo (Ph.D)
Assistant Professor, Harvey Mudd College
Guo is a plant ecologist and data scientist intrigued by plant strategies for surviving arid environments. She is particularly interested in disentangling the temporal patterns of plant responses to environmental extremes and uses Bayesian statistical approaches to evaluate empirical measurements from the field and lab. Guo also loves to teach reproducibility and data science skills in R. About Google Scholar GitHub [email protected]
Brad Posch (Ph.D)
Plant Ecophysiologist
Dr. Posch is a plant ecophysiologist who studies how plants respond to environmental stressors such as heat and drought. Posch received his Ph.D. from the Australian National University and has worked as a postdoc under Dr. Nick Smith at Texas Tech University. Although Posch’s research focuses on leaf gas exchange, he is also interested in the biochemical processes underlying physiological responses to warming. Google Scholar ResearchGate [email protected]
Susan Albor (B.S)
Ph.D. Arizona State University/Desert Botanical Garden (In progress)
Susan Albor’s background is in soil ecology and environmental science. Albor’s research interests include studying interactions between plants and mycorrhizal fungi and how plant traits are shaped by their relationships with beneficial soil microbes. Currently she is working on her PH.D. studying how plant microbe interactions may increase the thermal tolerance of plants when exposed to heat stress. Susan Albor’s received a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to support her doctoral studies.
Jared Williams (Ph.D)
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jared is a plant ecologist interested in how climate change affects dryland vegetation communities. Jared’s work has applied stable isotopes, ecophysiological measurements, and empirical modeling to evaluate the responses of dryland riparian forests to rising temperatures and increasingly severe droughts. With a strong passion for ecological restoration, Jared aims for his research to inform effective restoration practices that improve ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change.
Cassondra Herman (B.S.)
M.S. Arizona State University/Desert Botanical Garden (In progress)
Cassondra received her BS at University of Maryland College Park and is now working with the Garden to understand the effects of warming temperatures on desert species’ photosynthesis. She is interested in how photosynthesis is affected by climate change and how it can be utilized to create a more sustainable future.
Lab Updates
Lab members Ali Schuessler and Brad Posch were recently featured on the popular podcast: In Defense of Plants.
A recent paper published by current lab postdoc, Dr. Brad Posch reviews the basic principles of thermal acclimation in the processes that convert sunlight into energy and energy into the conversion of CO2 into photosynthetic products that support plant growth and survival