08/20/2026
Hi everyone! I’m Mariah Estrella, and this summer I’ve been working in the Desert Biome at Biosphere 2 studying how we can use remote sensing to understand desert plants better.
My project looks at whether we can learn about a plant’s internal health and function just by looking at the light it reflects. To do this, I used two main tools. First, the LiCor 6800, which measures gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, and environmental conditions, basically capturing how a plant is photosynthesizing and responding to its environment in real time. Second, the ASD FieldSpec 3, which measures how much light a leaf reflects across a range of the light spectrum, from 350 to 2500 nm. It lets me pick up on subtle differences between plants from how they look on the inside to how they are behaving internally.
Think of it like a plant’s fingerprint. Every leaf reflects light a little differently depending on its water content, structure, and health, so by reading that reflectance data, I can understand what’s happening inside the plant without ever having to damage it.
To back this up, I also collected physical measurements from each leaf, such as thickness, mass, leaf area, and water content, so I could connect what the spectrometer was picking up to real physical traits.
What’s made this project so interesting to me is that desert plants are some of the least studied plants out there, even though dry lands cover almost 40% of the Earth’s surface. Getting to work closely with these species taught me so much about how tough and adaptable they really are, and how much resilience it takes for them to survive drought conditions most other plants couldn’t handle.
I’m really grateful for the chance to learn from such an incredible team of mentors this summer and to contribute to research that could help us understand and protect desert ecosystems using tools like satellites down the line.
