News
Environmental variability and global change are discussed more and more frequently in news articles and programs as the general public becomes increasingly aware of the rapid environmental transformations taking place around the world. The Institute of the Environment produces general interest articles about current UA research relevant to the environment, spotlights that chronicle the work of IoE faculty, and other articles, including a series on drought in the Southwest. The most recent articles are listed below. Older articles and links to UA News press releases also are available in the News Archive.
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The UA is the No. 1 university in the U.S. and second in the world for environmental science research, according to a study analyzing citation data from more than 11,000 journals. Environmental research at the UA involves many international collaborations, and the results directly inform management practices in pressing areas such as land use, water and food security and energy.
The UA and Pima County are entering the global water-energy sustainability arena by establishing the Water and Energy Sustainable Technology Laboratories at Pima County’s new Water Reclamation Campus.
The UA's Institute for Place and Wellbeing will explore the connection between the physical environment and human health and well-being. A partnership of the UA College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine in the UA College of Medicine, and the UA Institute of the Environment, the interdisciplinary institute will focus on research and education about human reactions to physical space.
Microbe-eating flies from at least three different locations around the world recently have evolved into herbivores, feeding on some of the most toxic plants on Earth. Fly detectives and UA evolutionary biologists Noah Whiteman and Richard Lapoint are trying to find out what genetic pathways led the flies to such a major change of lifestyle.
Genomics, the topic of this year's UA College of Science lecture series, involves scientists who sequence and assemble the entire set of DNA contained in each cell of an organism.
February–April forecasts call for above-average temperatures and below-average precipitation in the Southwest.
What happens when a poet hangs out in a carbon-dating lab?
In the summer of 2012, the University of Arizona Poetry Center's Poet in Residence, Genine Lentine, spent lots of time at the Poetry Center, but she also found her way to the Mass Spectrometry Lab on campus.
After a nearly 5,000-year vigil upon a Nevada mountaintop, an ancient tree now finds its home in the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. A member of the long-lived Bristlecone pine species, the tree called Prometheus is the oldest individual ever known to have lived. Its age was not accurately known until a few years ago.
An international research team including UA rangeland ecologists has discovered that plants' demand for water fluctuates depending on how much water is available. However, this resilience has a limit, and prolonged drought conditions threaten the survival of these plant communities.
The UA Science and Technology Park is an example of Tucson offering something no other city can match. “The Solar Zone is an innovative effort that demonstrates our commitment to renewable energy and the UA’s commitment to innovation," said Paul Bonavia, chairman and CEO of UNS Energy Corp. and Tucson Electric Power. With the UA and other educational institutions, the region has the ability to build and support a talented workforce.