New study finds drought-resistant native plant can irrigate food crops
The trick to boosting crops in drought-prone, food-insecure areas of West Africa could be a ubiquitous native shrub that persists in the toughest of growing conditions.(more…)
Mesquite trees and woody shrubs are better adapted than grasslands to a Southwestern climate predicted to shift toward higher temperatures and greater variability in rainfall, UA ecologists have discovered.
As the desert Southwest becomes hotter and drier, semi-arid grasslands are slowly being replaced by a landscape dominated by mesquite trees, such as Prosopis velutina, and other woody shrubs, a team of University of Arizona researchers has found.
In a “leaf-to-landscape” approach, the team combined physiological experiments on individual plants and measurements across entire ecosystems to quantify how well grasslands, compared to mesquite trees and woody shrubs, cope with heat and water stress across seasonal precipitation periods. (more…)