Most days, you’ll find Joost van Haren tromping through Arizona’s only tropical rainforest. An assistant research professor at the UA, van Haren works in the rainforest at Biosphere 2—in the middle of ...

ORACLE, Ariz. — Plopped in the Sonoran Desert, just outside Tucson, Ariz., sits a massive, multilevel greenhouse that's probably best known as the inspiration for a Pauly Shore movie. A slick, stepped ...

To get to the nearest rainforest, from Tucson, that is, head up Oracle Road/Arizona Highway 77 and drive north for 24 miles. Next, at milepost 96.5, turn right onto Biosphere 2 Road. There you’ll find ...

Nestled in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains, around 31 miles from Tucson, there exists an oasis; a collection of environments one would never anticipate to exist in the scorched Arizona desert.

Standing atop Biosphere 2’s iconic rooftop dressed in the same spacesuit George Clooney wore in the 2013 film “Gravity,” ...