Melanie Lenart is an environmental scientist and writer. She has dedicated more than a decade to understanding how natural systems and climate regimes change with global warming -- and conveying this information to the public.

After receiving her Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Global Change (2003) from the University of Arizona in Tucson, she took a postdoctoral research position with the UA's Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, now the Institute of the Environment (IE). She also has a master’s degree in forestry (1992) from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and a bachelor’s degree in journalism (1984) from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Lenart has worked to help inform a variety of stakeholders throughout the Southwest on climate variability and change. Her research has involved field work studying carbon cycling, the effect of high carbon dioxide levels on plants, tree-ring dating and tree uprooting dynamics. She has worked in tropical, subtropical and temperate forests, exploring both physical and social questions.

From 1982 through 1996, she worked primarily as a newspaper reporter and editor, including at Puerto Rico’s English-language daily newspaper The San Juan Star and several papers in the Chicago area. Since 1996, she has continued to report on climate and its impacts for a variety of venues, including the Southwest Climate Outlook, published by the IE's Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) project. Recently, she completed two books.

• Global Warming in the Southwest. In 2007, CLIMAS published this book, which includes two dozen of Lenart's Southwest Climate Outlook feature articles along with section forewords from other CLIMAS researchers.

• Life in the Hothouse: How a Living Planet Survives Climate Change. In April of 2010, the University of Arizona Press is scheduled to release Lenart's new book, written in a journalistic style. Life in the Hothouse explores how the planet responded to previous temperature extremes, in both modern times and the distant past, for guidance on how to prepare for our future in this warming world.