Dryland farming has been a staple for indigenous desert communities for centuries. University of Arizona professor Michael Kotutwa Johnson discusses how modern solutions to growing crops during the drought can be developed through traditional farming methods practiced on tribal lands.

Ladd Keith, director of the University of Arizona’s Heat Resilience Initiative within the Arizona Institute for Resilience, has been appointed to Arizona Governor Katie Hobb’s new Workplace Heat Safety Task Force.

Hike Tumamoc Hill enough times on a regular schedule and you're bound to get to know other regular hikers. And in the dead of summer, only the most committed make it out for the evening hikes. At about 4:30 p.m. on Monday, near the hottest point of a 107-degree Tucson summer day, the hill was deserted. But of the few who were out there, they all seemed to know – or know about – Taylor Moore.

An AIR climate science team has developed an extended forecast model to provide warning of extreme weather events much earlier than conventional forecasts. An earlier warning could give people more time to prepare – or escape.

This past May, Earth Grant’s Program Assistant, Lexis, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and is moving on to the ‘real world’. During their freshman year, Lexis was in the inaugural Earth Grant cohort in 2021 and was then hired as the first Program Assistant where they supported the program for three years.

We asked Lexis some parting questions to celebrate their participation in Earth Grant during their college career.

There are small but subtle changes that take place in Southern Arizona's climate before our yearly monsoon rains start.

At the University of Arizona, monsoon season is also a time for friendly competition. Returning for a fifth year is Southwest Monsoon Fantasy Forecasts, a game inspired by fantasy football and March Madness that allows participants to estimate the amount of rainfall the monsoon will bring each month to a handful of cities throughout the Southwest.

At the University of Arizona Campus Agricultural Center, in the shadow of Tucson’s craggy Catalina Mountains, the traditionally planted Hopi cornfield is out of place. “This corn isn’t where it belongs,” says Michael Kotutwa Johnson, associate faculty in the Indigenous Resilience Center within the Arizona Institute for Resilience, and member of the Hopi tribe farming his ancestral land 300 miles north. “The corn and I are on a mission.” 

An informal, virtual public hearing process has begun for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s proposed rule to establish a federal heat standard in the workplace.

Researchers Heidi Brown and Ladd Keith of AIR's Climate Assessment for the Southwest within the Arizona Institute for Resilience are working together with the Pima County Health Department to evaluate cooling centers – and finding solutions to help protect lives across the Southwest.