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Desert Botanical Garden to conduct first-ever urban saguaro cactus census
When people think of the Arizona desert, they think of the saguaro cactus, but since the record-breaking heat during the summer months of 2020, many of these cacti have died. Now, scientists at the Desert Botanical Garden are on a mission to find out why. FOX 10's Irene Snyder reports.
PHOENIX - Since the summer of 2020, residents across the Phoenix metropolitan area say their saguaros have been getting sick.
Scientists at the Desert Botanical Garden are now on a mission to figure out what the problem is, and they're asking the community for help.
"People were coming to us looking for answers," said Tanya Hernandez, a research scientist with Desert Botanical Garden.
Following record high temperatures and a mild monsoon season two years ago, many people have reported seeing their cacti suffering.
"Saguaros falling, entire plant or losing some arms, getting thin, getting sick," Hernandez said.
Arizonans are seeing unusual saguaro blooms, and experts aren't sure why
Across southern Arizona and parts of the Valley, people are seeing saguaro blooms on the stem - not something commonly seen on the cacti.
Hernandez is guessing that it has to do with climate change, but to determine what exactly is going wrong, they've launched a saguaro census.
"Get to know how many saguaros we have in what shape they are, how healthy they are, where they are," she said.
But counting all the saguaros in Arizona is a big job, so the Botanical Garden team is enlisting the help of community scientists using the app iNaturalist.
"We can be in so many places at once instead of Tanya and I doing things by ourselves," said Jeny Davis, the EcoFlora coordinator at Desert Botanical Garden. "We can rely on community scientists, and the public can join, and it is really important for us to get that data."
So far, they've collected about a thousand observations, and they plan to use the information to better protect and treat the species.
"The next step is we're asking people to volunteer their plants," Hernandez said. "If you have a saguaro and want to volunteer it for science let us know, [we're] gonna take samples, measurements and monitor these plants."
Download iNaturalist on Google Play or on the Apple App Store.
More on the Saguaro Census: https://dbg.org/events/saguaro-census/2022-05-08/
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Stressed saguaros: Blooms found on side of cactus instead of at the top
FOX 10's Jennifer Martinez reports.