Why go up when you can go down? Botanist Jim Malusa travels to the lowest places on the planet, on bicycle. From Lac Assal in Africa to Lake Eyre in Australia to Death Valley, he finds dry deserts, but also oases of life—birds, plants, and even people.

This was one of the first stories we produced for the newly conceived Science in Action. One of the goals for our new program is to show that scientists aren't just people in white coats in a lab-- they're adverturers!