Plant & Wildlife Sciences

What started as a student research project on the Great Salt Lake turned into a report making national headlines. Karoline Busche worked with thirty-one coauthors to help Utahns know how to protect the Great Salt Lake from disappearing.

Four-year-old Sara Sayedi sits on her mother’s bedroom floor in Iran, flipping through images of colorful monkeys and frigid arctic landscapes. The world comes alive to her through the villages pictured in National Geographic magazines and the detailed maps in atlases. Her mother helps her sound out unfamiliar words like Antarctica. Decades later, Sayedi’s fascination with the natural world continues to grow as she engages in environmental conservation work through research that impacts policymaking.

Dallin Leota, the new owner of the Lytle Preserve, opens the land to BYU students, visitors, and Paiute tribe leaders to provide hands-on experiences with history, preservation, and land restoration.

BYU Plant & Landscape Systems students won big at the 2022 National Collegiate Landscape Competition. After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of 37 students competed in a variety of landscape-related events at North Carolina State University.

After undergoing several dynamic changes over the last year, the College of Life Sciences Greenhouse—a hidden gem—is primed to enable students and faculty to innovate sustainable practices and impact global nutrition. The new greenhouse director, Dr. Matt Arrington, has worked hard to make the greenhouse the ideal setting for hands-on learning and inspired research. His vision is to provide “enough open space where students can have [an] innovative flow of ideas and create their own projects.” Students are encouraged to brainstorm ideas and then use greenhouse resources to carry them out.

In Dr. Paul Frandsen’s lab, BYU College of Life Sciences student Andrew Sheffield filtered countless jars of environmental DNA. He had no idea that his hours of work and eye for detail would provide him with the skills to contribute to his community and make a difference during a world-wide pandemic.

Working in Dr. Paul Frandsen's lab allowed College of Life Sciences student Andrew Sheffield to develop the cross-disciplinary skills needed to contribute during a world-wide pandemic.