(upbeat music) - Coming up next on this special science and technology edition of "Arizona Horizon," we learn about how the City of Phoenix is rapidly becoming a bioscience hub.

And will hear how the Biosphere 2 is being used to help research the impacts of climate change.

That and more next on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon."

- [Announcer] This hour of local news is made possible by contributions from the friends of PBS, members of your PBS station, thank you.

- Good evening, and welcome to this special science and technology edition of "Arizona Horizon."

I'm Ted Simons.

The City of Phoenix is becoming a bioscience hub with millions of square feet of bioscience healthcare facilities under development or in the pipeline.

We recently spoke with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and economic development director Chris Mackay about how this local bioscience boom is happening.

Good to have you both here.

Good to see you again.

- Good to be back.

- All right, Mayor, we just start with you.

Phoenix a bioscience hub, what is a bioscience hub?

- There was just a study of emerging bioscience market.

We are number one in life science job growth.

We are seeing companies that are spinning out of our universities.

The City of Phoenix invested in bringing TGen to our Core and we've had 30 companies come out of there.

We have one company that's on the cutting edge of mRNA technology, which we've all seen over the last years as a place to be.

- Yes.

- Another that can help you diagnose cancer early when it's easier to treat.

This is good news for people who live in our city who want the best possible healthcare.

Our investment in innovation is going to make us a safer city.

- Christina, did I read that only Boston has more facilities of this nature under development, that's it?

- It was really exciting for us to find out that we were now in number two position in new lab space under construction in the country, - And thus the rebrand Bioscience Core.

Why a rebrand?

What's branding have to do with all this?

- You know, when we first started this in 2000, the early 2000s, it was really focused on medicine, the medical school and that type of thing.

As biosciences has really evolved into implantable and wearable technologies, we thought it was better to rebrand as a broader biosciences as opposed to just biomedicine.

- That makes sense to you, Mayor, is that what the idea was for rebranding?

- It's been very helpful.

We're seeing interest from all over the world, particularly European companies who are looking for a North American outpost, and they want to know who's on the cutting edge, but also who will welcome them.

Phoenix is known for our hospitality and being a great place for where someone can come to a new community and succeed.

The fact that we are attracting that talent made sure we need to communicate effectively that we are more than a medical school, although the medical school continues to be a core.

- Yeah, a core indeed.

Give us the parameters here.

I'm seeing like 4th and 7th Street, maybe Monroe or something, where is this Core area?

- So it is 30 acres that is kind of on the Van Buren to Polk, and from 4th Street over to 7th Street.

And it really is kind of soft edges as we have University of Arizona and ASU and NAU that are gathering around the Core itself.

It really is, is having more soft edges these days.

- And as much, as far as money is concerned, how much has Phoenix invested in this?

- Well, I think the focus needs to be, there's been, the private sector has been there, our hospitals have been there.

So just during my time as mayor, since 2019, we've seen 3.5 billion in investments.

And that is looking a little bit broader than just the campus.

The campus is a huge success story, but we are seeing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment near Mayo, and we are seeing great companies near our airport.

We hope no one has to suffer from a cancer diagnosis, but GE is making the most advanced imaging technology to detect breast cancer in Phoenix.

For families like mine that have been deeply impacted by cancer, having so many of these leading edge companies here means we have the best training, our physicians have the best tools.

So I think it's a citywide success story, although certainly anchored by our downtown.

- Indeed, but as far as a city investment, do we have a number on that at all?

Is it, 'cause I thought I saw something around like 600 million, something like that.

Is that, does that ring true?

- When you look at what the City of Phoenix and our university partners have invested together, it is just north of 600 million.

Yes.

- Yeah, and could there be more on the way as far as Phoenix city investment?

Or is it still kind of looking for private sector first?

- This is a little bit of breaking news, but next month, the City of Phoenix is likely to announce that we will be going to our voters in 2023 with a bond package.

The 2006 bond was instrumental in bringing the Bioscience Core to our city.

And I'm hopeful we'll be able to build on that success with the support of our voters.

Hopefully, the people who are watching "Horizon' say having better access to cutting edge medicine, to the startups that are solving challenges is good news for Phoenix.

And we wanna build on the success.

- Christine, you kind of touched on this earlier, but give us a better indication of how all this got started.

I know Flinn Foundation was involved a little bit here.

- Yes.

- There was a, I remember the Bioscience Roadmap.

I remember reporting on that.

- Yes.

- Was that pretty much ground zero?

- It really was.

So 2001, Flinn created the Biosciences Roadmap in partnership with all of the communities, and the state, and the county.

And then next really came the City of Phoenix's investment in an area that was planned for the Cardinals' stadium.

So that's what was supposed to be on the 30 acres.

And smarter people prevailed, and it became the Biosciences Core.

And as you move forward today, 2004 TGen was attracted by the City of Phoenix, and they're still there today.

And they really were what we call our Adam company.

They were the first company, and have really stood as the attraction to bringing all these new companies in.

- And I remember those days, and I remember one of the questions I kept asking was, how in the world are we gonna catch up to the Bostons, to the San Diegos even, to the places where this research kind of, and this type of research has been going on for years and years?

I mean, how has Phoenix succeeded in keeping pace with these other regions?

- We have amazing institutions like Barrows that is a national leader.

Mayo got the biggest grant with partners to study how we can fight cancer for our Native American community.

We, every week Chris and I have a new headline to celebrate the success, and, I think, the lifestyle.

But we did have some great anchor institutions that helped attract the people who are leading the way and coming up with these great discoveries, building strong companies, and.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And Christine, last question to you.

Now we're gonna see some construction going on here between 4th and 7th Street?

- It is, my favorite bird is the crane.

- Is the crane.

- So yeah, we are, I think we'll see some new buildings under construction here in early 2023.

- All right, sounds good.

Chris Mackay, City of Phoenix.

And Mayor, it's good to have you both here.

Congratulations on this.

Sounds like things are going great guns.

- Thank you.

- You bet.

Up next, how the Biosphere 2 is helping scientists study the impact of climate change.

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(uplifting music) (singers chanting) (upbeat music continues) (singers chanting) - International research scientists are using the Biosphere 2, the world's only enclosed rainforest, to study climate change and its effect on the Earth's ecosystem.

We learn more from Laura Meredith, a researcher at the University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment.

Laura Meredith, welcome to "Arizona Horizon."

Good to have you here.

And we appreciate your time telling us about this climate research involving the Biosphere 2.

First of all, what is the Biosphere 2?

- So Biosphere 2 is like a giant greenhouse that's located between Tucson and Phoenix in the desert ecosystems.

And it houses a number of different ecosystems itself.

Inside there's a rainforest where we did this research.

There's actually an ocean, a savanna, desert.

And we use this experimental research facility to study how our ecosystems, how our biosphere interacts with the atmosphere and is responding to climate change.

- Yeah, I was gonna say, the research was looking at what climate changes impact on the ecosystem?

- Exactly, we were really interested in understanding how drought affects tropical rainforest.

Because with global change, the frequency and the intensity, the severity of the droughts are increasing in those ecosystems.

- And from what I understand, there was like a four month controlled drought and recovery study, true?

- Yeah, so we were studying the ecosystem for over four months.

We had a period before the drought where we got the baseline conditions.

And then we just essentially turned off the sprinklers for over two months, for 65 days, before we rewet the ecosystem.

And that was a really severe drought for this rainforest that usually gets water every two or three days on a schedule.

But with this unique experimental facility where we get to control where and when it rains, we were able to take the whole system into a very severe drought.

- Okay.

So what did you find?

- We found that not all of the plant species responded uniformly to drought.

And we really found that plants grouped into two major groups.

Either there were very sensitive to drought and they shut down their activity almost immediately as soon as the soil started to dry.

And then we had a more tolerant, a drought-tolerant group that was actually able to kind of chug along, and persist, and carry the ecosystem throughout this intense drought.

And that helped our ecosystem be more resilient to the severe drought.

And it also kind of set the ecosystem up for a faster, more swift recovery once we started the rain again.

- Were you surprised at the resilience of the ecosystem?

- I have to say I was pretty surprised because the soils were cracking.

I mean, it really, almost the researchers inside, you know, we were feeling maybe a little angsty wishing for rain ourselves.

And so I was surprised that there were a lot of plants that really had these drought strategies, these adaptations to deal with drought that maintain their green color and maintain their function.

And so it was surprising to me how, you know, how the whole system as an ecosystem responded rather than thinking about one plant at a time.

- Well, and with that in mind, there's a lot of talk these days of how plants interact and how, you know, some would say they even communicate with each other.

Did you see like plants that could handle a drought better doing something to maybe help out those plants that weren't doing so well?

- Yeah, well, we have to kind of conjecture and anthropomorphize about, - Yes.

- you know, - how they were feeling and what motivated them to do what they did.

But one thing that we discovered was that we had these two groups of plants, and especially the tall trees, that were either sensitive to drought and shut down their activity or the ones that were tolerant.

And we were thinking initially that maybe the sensitive plants didn't have deep roots that let them access the deep soil reserves, which are, it's the water in the soil that dries out at the very, very end.

So it stays there the longest.

And so we thought that maybe these sensitive trees just couldn't access that water and that's why they shut down their activity.

But what we found out using an isotope label tracer, so we used water that had an excessive deuterium in it, which is the heavy isotope of hydrogen.

And by tracing the movement of that labeled water that we put at the very bottom of the ecosystem, up through the roots, up through the stem, and out of the leaves, we actually determined that the sensitive trees and the drought-tolerant trees all had access to that deep water.

But for some reason, the drought-sensitive trees decided not to use it during the drought.

And so it does kind of, you know, beg the question of whether or not that there's some cooperation there - Yeah.

- that by not using that deep water, did the sensitive plants spare some for the tolerant plants?

You know, or at least that was the outcome.

We don't know the intention.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I would like to think that there's something going on on there.

We just don't know.

As far as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and how trees collect this, what did you see there?

- So we found that even in the severe drought, this tropical rainforest maintained being a net carbon sink, which means that more carbon was coming into the ecosystem than going out.

The amount coming in really dropped down.

But we did see that it was able to stay a sink, in part because of this diversity of plant responses.

We also use the infrastructure, the fact that this is a contained rainforest under a steel structure that's encapsulated in glass to release another isotope tracer, which is a 13 carbon form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

And that heavy carbon we watched as plants photosynthesize it, and as it moved down the branches and the stems into the subsurface through the root network.

And we had a lot of chambers along the way on the leaves, and the stems, and the soil to really monitor how this heavy carbon was moving.

And so we found that not only was the forest taking up less carbon during the drought, but actually just carbon was moving more slowly through the whole ecosystem.

And so it was interesting for us to clock the speed of carbon under drought, and to really be able to independently say that there was less happening, and, you know, the whole system had slowed down.

- Yeah.

- So that was a neat finding.

- System had slowed down, but there was some resilience there.

It's a really a fascinating study here.

Laura Meredith from the U of A School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Congratulations on this study and thanks so much for telling us about it.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you.

It's a pleasure.

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Submit your questions, comments, and concerns via email at arizonahorizon@asu.edu.

(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music continues) - Monarch butterflies were recently classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

To learn more about why there are fewer of these butterflies being found in the wild and what can be done to protect them, we spoke with Gail Morris, coordinator of the Southwest Monarch Study a citizen science research project.

Gail, thank you so much for joining us.

Good to have you here as we talk about monarch butterflies increasingly endangered.

What's going on out there?

- A little while ago, the IUCN came out with the endangered proclamation on the worldwide front.

And this really has to do with their migration.

Their migration is threatened because of climate change issues, because of loss of habitat.

Here in the United States though, that proclamation holds that monarchs are in fact endangered, but they are not endangered under our in Endangered Species Act yet.

- Not yet.

- Not yet.

They are candidates for it.

- Okay.

- They were not selected to move forward in that process in 2020, in December, but they may be by 2024.

They're reviewing this every year what's happening to their population.

- And we're seeing, I mean I'm seeing 20 to 90% drop in the last several decades - Right.

- from hundreds of millions down to tens of millions.

Again, why is that happening?

- It's a multitude of reasons, and that's what makes it so complex.

Loss of habitat is probably the number one problem across the United States.

Some of that is being amplified by climate issues that we hear in our everyday news.

Temperatures that are too hot make it difficult for monarchs to complete their life cycle.

Extreme storms can affect the overwintering sites, they could affect the breeding season that's going on right now.

- Yeah.

- Pesticides that are increased in usage to protect our foods, you know, to get it on our tables.

So it's very complex with many different things.

- And indeed, pesticides from farming and industrial agriculture, pesticides from backyard and front yard use as well, true?

- True, and sometimes, unfortunately, I think we all know that at times we think, "Okay, a teaspoon will look really good, let's do two.

We'll make sure we get it down."

- Yeah.

- So sometimes homeowners actually abuse that on a higher level, unintentionally, I want to say.

- And when we talk about monarch butterflies, the journey that these butterflies take, it's amazing.

Tell us about that.

- It's an incredibly long journey depending on where they began.

In the eastern realm of the monarchs, they can travel 2,000 to 3,000 miles.

In the west, it's a shorter one.

So far, from Arizona, our longest flight has been around 1,200 miles.

And that was from Camp Verde down to Mexico.

- Wow!

- Yeah.

- And how do we know that?

I mean, is there a way to monitor these things?

- Actually there is.

We put little blue tags with the Southwest Monarch Study on monarchs during the migration, starting this next month.

And we wait till people like yourself - Yeah.

- would be out and see them fly by and record that number for us.

- Isn't that something?

- Yeah.

- [Ted] Now, and the importance of monarchs to the ecosystem.

I mean, one would think, you know, the butterfly effect really does have a factor here, doesn't it?

- It does.

And what we do to help them amplifies too by individuals like ourselves.

It doesn't need to be a huge effort.

But if every individual could be along the way helping them, we can affect many.

- But in terms of the ecosystem itself, I mean, in terms of what they eat, things that go after monarch butterflies, the worms and the whole, I mean, they're part of the grand scheme, are they?

- Yes.

The predators, yes.

It's a whole life cycle.

- Yeah.

- Everything's interacted together.

- And I read somewhere and, you know, anyone with roses or aphids, you don't like aphids, get rid.

But monarchs love aphids, don't they?

- Do you know aphids don't bother monarchs.

Female monarchs will come in and lay eggs in milkweeds that are loaded with aphids.

- Yes.

- So it bothers us more than it bothers them.

- You mentioned milkweed.

That's an important plant for monarchs, is it?

- It is.

It's their only host plant.

You know, a host plant is where a monarch can lay the eggs.

But just as important during the fall migration is fall blooming flowers, nectar.

Because by the fall, they are no longer breeding.

That migration generation is gonna live a full nine months likely, versus a breeding monarch will only live about four to six weeks.

So right now, any monarchs you encounter, I just saw some up at the Grand Canyon this week, they'll live about a month, give or take a week.

But in the next month, those that come out of that beautiful, green chrysalis, - Yes.

- will live up to nine months.

- Wow!

So what can people do?

I mean, people want to help monarch, but how could you not want to help a monarch butterfly, for goodness sakes?

What can people do?

- Right, it's include milkweed in your garden, if you can, in your yard.

Include plants that they love for their migration.

You know, it's still not too late to plant sunflower seeds, zinnia seeds for your backyard.

And they'll be in bloom next month when the migration starts coming through.

And if you're lucky, those monarchs will stop in your yard.

- Stop in your yard.

Yeah, they're absolutely gorgeous.

Gail Morris, Southwest Monarch Study coordinator.

Thank you so much.

Good information.

And let's go, monarchs, huh?

- There you go.

Thanks.

(upbeat guitar music) (mysterious music) (mysterious music continues) - When you want to be more connected, friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, watch us online.

(upbeat music) - And that is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon."

You have a great evening.

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