The Sonoran Desert teems with wildlife. These 3D scans could help protect its future

Culture The Sonoran Desert teems with wildlife. These 3D scans could help protect its future April 20, 20265:00 AM ET Alina Hartounian The RAF Exhibit Gallery hosts an immersive with mutliple screens showing FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse on April 14, 2026 at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. Caitlin O'Hara for NPR hide caption toggle caption Caitlin O'Hara for NPR PHOENIX — It was about 6:30 a.m. when the saguaro fell and the group chat lit up. Lidar scanners — the same tech that allows self-driving cars to create 3D maps of their environments — had been capturing the day-by-day evolution of the giant cactus for six months. They recorded the colossus as it pulsed with life, eventually tilted and ultimately toppled in the vast Sonoran Desert of Arizona in February 2024. That WhatsApp chat was filled with researchers, technicians and artists who had been scanning the plant as part of a yearslong art and data project, said Laura Spalding Best, the senior director of exhibits at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, which commissioned the project. Sponsor Message "It was so emotional and meaningful for everybody. [There] was like an excitement. But it was also super sorrowful at the same time," said Best. "And that's kind of what ends up being encapsulated in this video. You see that it's deteriorating, but it's still giving life to everything around it in this environment." The video Best describes is part of a new art exhibition at the garden called "Framerate: Desert Pulse," a collaboration with the technologically savvy artist group ScanLAB Projects based in London. It's made up of detailed 3D scans of Arizona's unique desert landscape featuring iconic saguaro and other cacti, such as prickly pear, ocotillo and cholla — also known as a "jumping cactus" for its pads' uncanny ability to cling to passersby. Visitors watch Horizon | Imprint from FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse on April 14, 2026 at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. Caitlin O'Hara for NPR hide c...