How the extreme heat from the past 2 summers are affecting Arizona plants

Typically, a plant that is healthy has different shades of green. However this past summer in Arizona plants are rapidly decaying due to the extreme temperatures the past two summers.

As a result, the extreme heat is causing plants to be stressed, dry and turn into a yellow and brown color.

Raul Puente, curator of Living Collections and Research Botanist at the Desert Botanical Garden, says the monsoon season had a strong impact on plant life because there wasn’t any precipitation or rain.

“The other factor was the lack of rain you know we didn’t have last year. The monsoon you know was very little amount of rain so you have the combination of the plant losing water and then the lack of rainfalls … that’s how the plants end up dying,” said Puente.

The rising temperatures are causing plants to reduce photosynthesis which is needed for plants to survive.

“The main impact to the plants is it reduces the photosynthetic surface of the plant which reduces the possibility of processing its food you know through photosynthesis,” said Puente.

At the Desert Botanical Garden, normally they lose an average of 10 to 12 plants during the day. Now it has skyrocketed.

“We went from losing an average of 10 to 12 plants during the day and then the last two years we lost more like 50, 56 plants,” said Puente.

Nature has also taken a toll, different species have a lack of food and shelter due to the limited number of plants.

“There’s a potential reduction on the population of many of the species. All of these animals … depend on these plants … they are also going to be suffering to lack of food, lack of shelter,” said Puente.

He adds there should be more restoration projects in order to help plant populations recover.

“We need to help these populations to recover expecting that nature will make this population recover by itself it will be difficult … and try to help with doing some restoration projects impacted by the fires and also the heat,” said Puente.