Research & Conservation
Like you, the members of the Desert Botanical Garden Research Department have a deep appreciation for desert life. Through your support, we are able to understand and conserve the desert’s unique plant life, and reveal intricate relationships that exist among the plants, environments, and people in our desert region. We gain our knowledge through investigations conducted in four areas of research:
- Conservation Biology
- Plant systematics and evolution
- Ecology
- Ethnobotany
Gaining this understanding betters our chances to reverse the current trends of plant and animal extinctions, ecosystem degradation, and the shrinking capacity of some environments to support human populations.
Research
Find out what we’re working on in our areas of research, and take a look inside the efforts of the Desert Plant Research Center.
Conservation
Join us in our efforts to conserve threatened species and habitats.
Resources
Browse through our living plant collections, or discover the many publications authored by our staff members.
People
Get to know the dedicated people on our Research & Conservation Staff.
Current Events
The Cactus Family in Arizona Project
Andrew Salywon, Wendy Hodgson, Charlie Butterworth and Raul Puente of the Garden’s Research Department, along with associated cacti experts Donald Pinkava and Marc Baker, have begun working on The Cactus Family in Arizona. This publication will provide an up to date revision of Lyman Benson’s Cacti of Arizona, published nearly 40 years ago. Projected date of completion is 2015.
Garden Receives NSF Grant to Database, Georeference and Digitize Herbarium
The Desert Botanical Garden Herbarium in collaboration with Arizona State University (ASU) Herbarium was awarded a National Science Foundation BRC grant in September 2009, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
