About Authors

Starting in 2025, these articles are written by Bethany Abrahamson & Marisa Thompson, with occasional guest contributors.
 


Bethany Abrahamson is the Extension Agriculture Agent for Sandoval County and coauthor for Desert Blooms. She received her Master of Science in Biology from the University of New Mexico, where she studied how natural history research collections are used by researchers and the public. As an entomology and nursery inspector for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture for nearly ten years, Bethany worked to protect our state from invasive pests and promote our agricultural industry. Her interests include the intersections between the natural world, art, and history. 


Dr. Marisa Thompson
Extension Urban Horticulture Specialist
NMSU Agricultural Science Center at Los Lunas
email: desertblooms@nmsu.edu

As the NMSU Extension Urban Horticulture Specialist, Marisa Thompson is responsible for active extension and research programs in sustainable horticulture practices for New Mexicans. In addition to landscape mulches and tomatoes, her current research interests at NMSU’s Agricultural Science Center at Los Lunas include urban forest canopy health, urban landscaping for birds and pollinators, and abiotic plant stressors, such as wind, cold, heat, drought, and soil compaction. She writes a weekly gardening column, “Southwest Yard & Garden,” which is published in newspapers and magazines across the state and on this blog. Readers can access the column archives and many other hort-related resources at https://desertblooms.nmsu.edu/. Find her on social media: @NMdesertblooms on Facebook & Instagram.

Marisa worked pairing plants and people at nurseries in Albuquerque before becoming an Albuquerque Area Extension Master Gardener in 2008 and a Las Cruces Tree Steward in 2014. Her M.S. in Horticulture involved a study of pecan orchard floor management and how weeds affect water status, soil nutrient availability, and nut yield of mature pecan trees. Marisa received a Ph.D. in Plant and Environmental Sciences in August 2017 for her research on pecan flowering mechanisms with a focus on plant hormones and genes that control floral initiation.

At the Ag Science Center Field Day in August 2017, Marisa demonstrated how researchers use a Scholander pressure chamber to measure water status of trees and other plants.



Extracting RNA from pecan leaf and bud tissues, Feb. 2016. Photo credit Sarah Wentzel-Fisher.




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