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Deserts have a special prominence in apocalyptic visions of the future. As a trope, the desert frequently indexes apocalyptic visions of the warming planet and future challenges of securing food, energy, and water in a changing environment. This article considers how diffuse visions of "environmental apocalypse" are spun through narratives constructions of the desert as sites of utopia and dystopia – places where humanity is simultaneously portrayed as meeting its most dire possibilities of collapse, but also places where hopeful futures might be tested out and extremes overcome in an era of climate catastrophe. This article offers a genealogy of techno-scientific schemes in the Arizona desert and the "visioneers" behind them, focusing on the most iconic example of Biosphere 2. Initiated in the mid-1980s, Biosphere 2's history illustrates how such projects are underpinned by multiple forms of spectacle, which draw on the ideals of science, technology, and environmental salvation to build settler colonial structures of exclusion and Indigenous dispossession. By centering the question of whose apocalypse we are being sold in such techno-centric "solutions" to ecological dilemmas, this article expands recent discussions of environmental injustice and settler colonial violence to show how ostensibly "progressive" ideals and initiatives are also violent and routinely overwrite histories and presents of colonial dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Food access is a global issue, and for this reason, a wealth of studies are dedicated to understanding the location of food deserts and the benefits of urban gardens. However, few studies have linked these two strands of research together to analyze whether urban gardening activity may be a step forward in addressing issues of access for food desert residents. Methods: The Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area is used as a case to demonstrate the utility of spatial optimization models for siting urban gardens near food deserts and on vacant land. The locations of urban gardens are derived from a list obtained from the Maricopa County Cooperative Extension office at the University of Arizona which were geo located and aggregated to Census tracts. Census tracts were then assigned to one of three categories: tracts that contain a garden, tracts that are immediately adjacent to a tract with a garden, and all other non-garden/non-adjacent census tracts. Analysis of variance is first used to ascertain whether there are statistical differences in the demographic, socio-economic, and land use profiles of these three categories of tracts. A maximal covering spatial optimization model is then used to identify potential locations for future gardening activities. A constraint of these models is that gardens be located on vacant land, which is a growing problem in rapidly urbanizing environments worldwide. Results: The spatial analysis of garden locations reveals that they are centrally located in tracts with good food access. Thus, the current distribution of gardens does not provide an alternative food source to occupants of food deserts. The maximal covering spatial optimization model reveals that gardens could be sited in alternative locations to better serve food desert residents. In fact, 53 gardens may be located to cover 96.4% of all food deserts. This is an improvement over the current distribution of gardens where 68 active garden sites provide coverage to a scant 8.4% of food desert residents. Conclusion: People in rapidly urbanizing environments around the globe suffer from poor food access. Rapid rates of urbanization also present an unused vacant land problem in cities around the globe. This paper highlights how spatial optimization models can be used to improve healthy food access for food desert residents, which is a critical first step in ameliorating the health problems associated with lack of healthy food access including heart disease and obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Optimizing community gardens could ensure equal access to food and cooling benefits during urban sprawl. • Compared to ad-hoc planning, optimization systematically identifies the optimal number and locations of gardens. • In warm/hot arid climates, more gardens are needed to mitigate urban heat than food-desert. • Food-desert or heat mitigation alone cannot optimize either's challenge. • Tradeoffs between the two are critical, especially when a small number of gardens are sited. Urban community gardens can reduce food insecurity and serve as green spaces alleviating extreme temperatures. Such co-benefit synergy may prove especially significant for arid-land metropolises. Despite these synergistic roles, planning for community gardens is largely undertaken in an ad-hoc manner. To date, few studies have addressed the full potential (co-benefits) of developing urban vacant land into community garden-green spaces. We addressed this in a spatially-optimized way, developing a model seeking to mitigate food desert and urban heat, and applied it to the fast sprawling Phoenix metro-area, Arizona (USA). Examining more than 5,000 vacant parcels for potential garden-green spaces, we found that the optimal number and locations of community gardens needed for different mitigation goals can vary significantly. In the Phoenix metro-area, the gardens required for extreme heat mitigation is about twice the number for food desert mitigation because high-temperature areas are more prevalent and expansive in semi-arid desert environment compared to the relatively small number low income, food desert areas. Furthermore, we found that the existing 76 community gardens were mostly clustered around urban cores, leaving two-thirds of the metro-area underserved. If sited in a spatially-optimized way, the co-benefits gained from the 76 gardens could be doubled, and covering more high-need neighborhoods. Integrating fine-scale vacant parcel data, our model identified high potential community garden-greening sites in priority neighborhoods with a precision not capable in conventional planning methods. Our findings demonstrate that spatially-optimized planning is of particular importance to avoid clustering of community gardens and ensure more equal access to local food and outdoor cooling benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since knowledge about wild foods is thought to be declining in younger generations worldwide, this study's objective was to describe variation in Sonoran wild food knowledge in southern Arizona between adults (n = 19) and students (n = 110) using free lists, an identification exercise, and structured interviews. There are fundamental differences in the quantity and quality of knowledge that adults and students have about wild desert foods. Adults know more native species, specific names, and correctly identify Sonoran wild foods twice as often as students. Fewer direct nature experiences in the younger generation may account for the observed variation in wild food knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]