They cover up to 40 percent of the globe and affect nearly 20 percent of the world's population. They feature sizzling temperatures, frigid winters, shifting sand dunes, and frozen tundra. They support unique wildlife, preserve the legacies of early civilizations, and provide a playground for recreationists. They are the Earth's arid environments, and, while outwardly different, they share key characteristics: limited water supplies; shallow soils; and slow rates of biological activity. These factors combine to make arid lands among the most environmentally sensitive areas on Earth, and, with climatic changes and encroaching population centers, they are also being increasingly threatened.
As its name implies, the Desert Research Institute has a long history of
desert expertise, including groundbreaking early research on the Great
Basin's archaeology, groundwater resources, plant life, rodent
populations, and even ant species. DRI's new Center for Arid Lands
Environmental Management (CALEM) was designed to build on DRI's strong
foundation of multidisciplinary arid lands research.
The center's
purpose is to address environmental management issues affecting global
desert ecosystems in an integrated and innovative way. "DRI should be
doing this," says interim director of the center, Dr. Eric McDonald. "We
have the history, the location, the people, and it's an excellent growth
area with resources waiting to be tapped. All the expertise is here at
DRI. Getting it together and focusing it is the challenge."
McDonald firmly stresses focus and innovation when he talks about CALEM's goals. In the beginning that may simply mean getting diverse researchers to sit down and talk. "People are sometimes so busy that they cannot interact enough, and opportunities are missed. One of my jobs is to make those potential interactions happen and create the opportunities that will lead to better research. We want to encourage more creativity, take a fresh look at the old problems, and identify which aspects we can effectively address as a team."
McDonald believes the complexity of a desert ecosystem makes that team approach especially important. "A desert environment is really like an organism," he explains. "You can't impact an individual component like air quality, water supply, or soil without impacting the whole system. I'd like CALEM to be a center that specializes in looking at the processes that link those individual components together. If we understand those processes, we'll be in a much better position to make predictions about what might happen when one component is affected." McDonald points to the example of a cultural resources site located next to a stream bed. "Someone may put a fence around that site and call it protected. But if something later changes water flow miles upstream, the site may end up buried or eroded. The system as a whole wasn't examined, only the piece someone was interested in protecting at the time."
Of current interest for CALEM is the United States Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. There, large-scale war games involving tanks, trucks, heavy equipment, and live fire are having a significant impact on the desert environment. DRI researchers are hoping to help the Army strike a balance between its stewardship of the land and the need to provide effective training for its troops. "Many times rare plants, animals, and cultural resources are best preserved on military lands because of the years of restricted access, " says McDonald. "The military takes that responsibility very seriously."
McDonald explains it is tactically important to preserve landscape integrity. "If you turn the desert into a giant sandbox, you lose the advantage of practicing on real terrain. It's not real anymore." McDonald admits that finding solutions to the dilemma is challenging-imagine what a tank would do to your front lawn. "But with an integrated approach, DRI can play a major role in helping find those solutions."
CALEM researchers are taking another creative approach to arid lands management with a project known as "Alternative Futures" that is directed by Dr. David Mouat. Collaborating with researchers from other institutions, DRI scientists combine socioeconomic models with geological information to predict the effects of population growth on the Mojave Desert in 10, 20, even 30 years. The computer models create different scenarios depending on factors such as growth rates, population age and income levels, and whether growth is mainly residential or industrial. "The approach is innovative because it connects environmental impact with changing demographics, not just population," says McDonald, "and it has great potential as a planning tool in the desert southwest where growth is such a big issue."
While DRI has individuals conducting research in deserts around the world, McDonald says for now, the arid lands of the U.S. west and southwest will be CALEM's primary focus. In the long term, he envisions using the center's integrated investigations globally. "As we learn to work together on environmental issues here," he notes, "we'll be able to take that focused approach elsewhere."
Ultimately, McDonald sees CALEM as providing solutions to a world becoming increasingly aware of the value of its arid environments and increasingly concerned with preserving and protecting them. "Great basic science isn't necessarily enough. We need to keep the future in mind when designing a project, and we need to do science that can translate into action. Science can provide solutions, and those solutions can make a difference. That's the kind of center CALEM should be."
Jackie Allen
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