Desert Wisdom/Agaves And Cacti:: Co2, Water, Climate Change

Agaves and cacti thrive under the higher temperatures, variable rainfall, and increased CO2 characteristic of global climate change. Moreover, their remarkable biomass productivity promises multitudinous new uses in addition to current uses ranging from tequila to delicious fruits to fodder consumed by animals worldwide. The book also discusses the water conserving ability of agaves and cacti based on nocturnal opening of stomata and hence nocturnal uptake of carbon dioxide, a photosynthetic pathway referred to as Crassulacean Acid Metabolism.

About the Topics

Although widely differing taxonomically, agaves and cacti are remarkably similar physiologically. Both conserve water and produce well in arid and semi-arid regions. Both can cope with climate change, including increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, increasing temperatures, and changing rainfall patterns. Indeed, they are ideal plants for the future-the best is yet to come!

About the Book

DESERT WISDOM/AGAVES and CACTI: CO2, Water, Climate Change delivers crucial scientific information on Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (Chapter 2), plant tolerances (Chapter 3), and crop improvements using an Environmental Productivity Index (Chapters 5 and 6). A reader can also focus on the uses of agaves and cacti (Chapter 1), climate change implications (Chapter 4), and bright ideas for coping with future climates (Chapter 7). Cross-referencing, a Glossary, and References for further reading enhance its utility for everyone.

About the Author

The world's leading authority on the environmental biology of agaves and cacti, Park S. Nobel has published more than 300 scientific articles and four other books on these plants: The Cactus Primer (with A.C. Gibson), Harvard University Press, 1986; Environmental Biology of Agaves and Cacti, Cambridge University Press, 1988; Remarkable Agaves and Cacti, Oxford University Press, 1994; and Cacti:

My scientific career began with a Bachelor's of Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1961. Entering graduate school at the California Institute of Technology, my interests ranged from solid state physics to astrophysics to biophysics. After a Masters Degree, I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue a Ph.D. in Biophysics, which I received in 1965. My research at that time focused on chloroplasts, the subcellular organelle responsible for photosynthesis. After a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral year at the University of Tokyo followed by another year at King's College of the University of London, I settled into the University of California, Los Angeles. I have been there ever since (currently as a Distinguished Professor of Biology Emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology). Website: www.eeb.ucla.edu/nobel.

A pivotal switch in career occurred during a Guggenheim Fellowship at the Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra in 1973/74. Stimulated by questions from students in a plant ecophysiology course, I moved toward environmental research on air boundary layers for rigid structures that did not flap in the wind. What better specimens than agaves and cacti of deserts! What began as a study of heat transfer across their air boundary layers progressed to everything entering or leaving such plants. Indeed, modeling and computer studies soon involved questions dealing with how desert plants cope with their extreme environment. Using agaves and cacti as taxa of interest, I thus shifted toward ecology, including responses of the roots. Also, I transferred approaches based on physics and engineering to plants with agronomic importance, such as Agave tequilana of tequila fame and various cacti cultivated for fruits and fodder in many regions of the world.

Besides nearly 400 research articles, I have written or edited 15 books. Beginning in 1970, I published a book entitled Plant Cell Physiology: A Physicochemical Approach (W.H. Freeman). As I became more interested in environmental biology, the scope broadened to include whole plants and plant communities. The seventh book in this series is Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology, 4th ed., published in 2009 by Academic Press/Elsevier.