Sustainable, Arid Environments
Growing a sustainable future.
Arid and dryland environments make up more than 35% of the world, grow 60% of the food we eat, and are home to the fastest growing populations on the planet. In the hot and water-scarce Southwest, our infrastructure serves as an incubator for big ideas—from supporting ecological biodiversity and developing new technologies to get the most out of every drop of water to innovative solutions to sustainable agriculture and food.
What we're capable of here can impact the world over.
Our Experiment Station network spans the geographic and biological diversity of Arizona. Explore a few of the ways we're providing the foundation for big ideas in support of arid, sustainable environments.
NEON, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is a continental-scale observation facility designed to collect long-term open access ecological data to better understand how U.S. ecosystems are changing. The comprehensive data, spatial extent, and remote sensing technology provided by NEON at the Santa Rita Experimental Range enable a large and diverse user community to tackle new questions at scales not accessible to previous generations of ecologists.
Photo credit: Abraham Karam, NSF NEON
We're leading the multi-state, 14 university collaborative Virtual Fence Project at Santa Rita Experimental Range, exploring an ecologically-focused and animal-welfare centered approach to cattle grazing/land management. The project generates roughly 16 million spatial data points per a year to support livestock industry and cattle producers’ regenerative agricultural practices.
Andrew AntayaNews, breakthroughs and profiles in science
Explore how we're advancing purpose-driven research and community-centered programming in Arizona, and beyond.
