Melanie Lenart
Melanie Lenart, Ph.D., author of LIFE IN THE HOTHOUSE: How a Living Planet Survives Climate Change, is an environmental scientist and writer who specializes in climate change and forests. As a scientist, she studied forest dynamics in China, Colorado, and Puerto Rico, where she lived during two major hurricanes. She was involved in an Arizona agricultural experiment testing how plants responded to elevated levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for the ongoing warming of the planet. While working as a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Arizona’s Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS), she researched forest policy in the aftermath of an Arizona wildfire that torched nearly half a million acres. Some of the many feature articles she wrote for CLIMAS have been pulled into a book compilation, Global Warming in the Southwest. An award-winning journalist, Lenart worked as an environmental writer for Puerto Rico’s daily San Juan Star in the mid-1990s. She lives with her husband in Tucson, where she teaches environmental writing and writes about the many facets of climate change and its impacts—including what we can do about it.