National Parks fellowship brings postdoc Lea Richardson from Joshua trees to saguaros

Yoder Lab postdoctoral scholar Lea Richardson is taking on a new project, studying the other iconic plant of North American deserts — saguaro cactus. Dr. Richardson was recently selected for a new postdoctoral fellowship supported by the National Park Foundation, which provides three years of salary and research funding to conduct research in a National Park.

Dr. Richardson applied specifically to work with scientists at Saguaro National Park, where she will take advantage of extensive available data, and likely conducting new fieldwork, to study the health of saguaro populations in the park and nearby Sonoran Desert. Her work will help the park plan for the protection of saguaros as they face many of the same challenges that confront Joshua trees — climate change and shifting wildfire regimes. The project neatly ties together themes from Dr. Richardson’s dissertation research on the population dynamics of long-lived plants and her current work with the lab on keystone desert perennials. She will remain based at the Yoder Lab as she begins the new project in June, traveling to Arizona for fieldwork and consultation with her new collaborators at the National Park.