CSUN Assistant Professor of Biology Jeremy Yoder was among the experts interviewed for a recent report on plans to protect Joshua trees against climate change and increasingly frequent wildfires, as part of Disney’s Planet Possible series, broadcast on Los Angeles ABC7 over the weekend.
Yoder is a collaborator on the Joshua Tree Genome Project, using genomic data collected from natural populations of Joshua trees and seedlings grown in experimental gardens to identify gene variants that may help the trees cope with hotter, drier conditions. This can ultimately be used to predict whether threatened populations of the trees will survive future climate change, and to source seeds from populations with stronger genetic potential to “rescue” populations that may otherwise fail.
You can watch the whole “Planet Possible” segment in the embedded video below:
Header image: Joshua trees in flower at Saddleback Butte State Park (Jeremy Yoder)