Dr.
Ania Panorska: Math Whiz...
Dr. Ania Panorska:
Math Whiz… You remember it. Sitting in algebra class
thinking, "What am I EVER going to use this for."
Well, you should have paid attention, because mathematician
and statistician Dr. Ania Panorska has your answer. In the
year since joining DRI, she has worked on projects in each
of the Institute's divisions. "It's really the nature
of statistics and mathematics to cross many disciplines,"
observes Panorska.
Currently, Panorska
is working with Dr. Mary Cablk from DRI's Division of Earth
and Ecosytems Sciences on a statistical computer model to
aid military officials in predicting development around
some of the country's military bases. "We take into
account not only environmental factors like water availability
and slope of the land," she explains, "but also
societal factors like utilities, schools, and shopping."
Panorska is also planning a project with the Division of
Atmospheric Sciences to create a statistical model for the
dispersion of toxic chemicals in the air. The aim, she says,
is to be able to quickly and accurately predict how and
where a toxic plume from hazardous material spills or other
sources might travel.
Dr.
Matt Bailey: High Voltage Vocation…
The citizens of ancient Greece believed lightning bolts
were hurled from Mount Olympus by the god Zeus. Of course,
here at DRI in the 21st century, everyone knows where lightning
really comes from: Dr. Matt Bailey's lab.
Bailey,
working in conjunction with the UNR Physics Department and
the Nevada Terawatt Facility, creates laboratory simulations
of atmospheric lightning discharge. The work is perhaps
the most realistic study ever undertaken of this most dramatic
and powerful of Nature's phenomena. "Lightning is poorly
understood," explains Bailey. "There haven't been
any really realistic laboratory studies performed in the
presence of ice crystals and aerosols-the kinds of things
that are around when lightning really strikes-before this."
Bailey is particularly
interested in assessing the role of lightning in releasing
nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere. "We humans make
it, too, as a pollutant with our internal combustion processes.
I'm interested in finding out who or what makes more."
Dr.
Don Sada: Spring Fever… What's
an aquatic ecologist doing at a place called the Desert
Research Institute? Plenty, according to Dr. Don Sada, whose
research on aquatic invertebrate and vertebrate communities
in the Great Basin has taken him to more that 2,000 springs
and spring-fed wetlands throughout the western United States.
Much of Sada's
current work focuses on tiny snails, just one- to four-millimeters
high, that live in such springs. "Nevada has a large
number of species that occur only in this state," he
explains. "Not too long ago, we didn't even know about
them, so there's a lot to learn."
According to Sada, there are 45 such snail species that
are found nowhere but Nevada. Besides being concerned with
conserving these endemic species, he's also interested in
how they can help assess the environmental changes that
affect these important habitats and understand the hydrological
systems that support them. Right now, he's busy preparing
an upcoming conference on western springs that will bring
together hydrologists, biologists, land users, and resource
managers to discuss the importance of these small, but vital
wetland regions.
Rosemary
Carroll: Model Behavior…
Sometimes a scientist slogs through mud, sometimes she slogs
through numbers. DRI's Rosemary Carroll, whose research
focuses primarily on numeric computer models of hydrologic
systems, knows all about both.
After a certain
amount of numerical slogging related to the Prairie Pothole
wetlands area in North Dakota, Carroll helped create a computer
model of how water moves through that system, given changes
in various conditions. "This particular model,"
explains Carroll, "looks at how the surface and groundwater
hydrology will react and respond to changes in climate."
At DRI, Carroll
has literally slogged through Carson River mud to formulate
mercury transport models. She is currently part of a team
of DRI researchers refining a three-dimensional groundwater
flow model for a small but important bit of land in central
Nevada-the Shoal site, used for a 1963 Department of Energy
(DOE) underground nuclear test. The groundwater model will
help predict the possible movement of contaminants through
the system and give DOE the information it needs to eventually
reclaim the site.
Kerry
Varley: Walking in Their Footsteps… In
the ten-plus years that DRI archaeologist Kerry Varley has
been walking and working in the mountains, valleys, and
deserts of southern Nevada, she's come to greatly admire
those ancient people who preceded her. "People think
of the Great Basin as so barren, so harsh," says Varley.
"But I'll tell you, the people that lived here thrived.
They were doing quite well, thank you, because they were
clever and resourceful."
Varley
points to tinajas, natural basins used by native people
to collect the sparse rainfall of the area, as one example
of that resourcefulness. The tinajas were carefully tended
and covered with makeshift lids of tilted stones to protect
their precious contents from evaporation and thirsty animals.
Being an archaeologist,
says Varley, "is the best job in the world," and
she happily shares that enthusiasm with others interested
in the field. Besides pursuing her own projects in Great
Basin prehistory, she goes out of her way to include University
of Nevada, Las Vegas students looking for practical experience
to augment their studies.
Dr.
Johann Engelbrecht: Every Breath You Take… Take
a breath, and you know you've gotten your next dose of oxygen.
But, what else might you have gotten? DRI researcher Dr.
Johann Engelbrecht hopes to be able to tell you exactly
that as he prepares DRI's Environmental Analysis Facility
to accommodate some impressive new equipment-a scanning
electron microscope (SEM) and an ICP Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS).
Both, says Engelbrecht, will improve our understanding of
air quality issues that may affect human health.
The SEM allows
researchers to look at and categorize individual particles
that make up the air we breathe. "An air filter might
capture cement particles from construction work, road dust,
and particles from various combustion processes like power
plant emissions or brush fires. We'll be able to see each
of these individually." The SEM also helps researchers
find bioaerosols, those airborne beings like pollen and
fungi that are such anguish to the allergically inclined.
Like the SEM, the ICP-MS will also mean more thorough examination
of the air, letting researchers detect airborne elements
like arsenic, cadmium, selenium, and mercury. "These
things can have various detrimental health effects, but
are hard to detect because they exist at extremely low concentrations."
Julianne
Miller: No Stranger to the Rain…
As a geology student earning a Bachelor's degree at the
University of Washington, Julianne Miller was familiar with
rain. But Miller
became more, not less, immersed in precipitation when she
came to sunny Las Vegas, earning her Master's in Water Resources
Management and becoming a researcher with DRI's Division
of Hydrologic Sciences. "The point of most of my research,"
explains Miller, "is to understand exactly what happens
to rainfall in this arid environment-how much runs off,
how much infiltrates-and what this can tell us about flood
control, watershed management, and waste management."
Understandably,
most flood control models and designs were developed in
areas where it rains much more than the four inches per
annum average of southern Nevada. "A lot of the models
we've been working with come from other parts of the country,
say the Midwest. Out here, we not only have much less rain,
we have very different types of storms, and our watersheds
obviously respond very differently. We're trying to modify
these designs so they make sense here, and so we aren't
spending a whole lot of money we don't have to spend."
Dr.
Saxon Sharpe: Ancient History Lesson… As
technology sweeps us pell-mell into the future, DRI researcher
Dr. Saxon Sharpe is reaching far back into the ancient past
for help with at least some of our modern problems. Sharpe
is a paleoecologist who describers her job-in the very simplest
terms-as "finding out what went on in the past so we
can predict what might happen in the future."
For Sharpe, that
means using the subtle clues left behind in mineral deposits,
lakebeds, even mollusk shells, to draw conclusions about
how the Earth's climate has fluctuated over the past centuries.
She's currently applying her expertise to the study of the
proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain
in southern Nevada. "We look at evidence of past climate
variability in the area, and based on that, make predictions
about future climate conditions." The possibility,
says Sharpe, of future glacial ages with cooler weather,
increased precipitation, and elevated groundwater tables,
needs to be considered in the engineering design of the
long-term storage facility.
Dr.
Kenneth Adams: How Was the Weather?…
If you think predicting
tomorrow's weather would be challenging, you should try
Dr. Kenneth Adams' job-reconstructing the weather conditions
of thousands of years ago.
Adams
is looking at the shorelines formed by Lake Lahontan, an
ancient inland sea that covered much of northwestern Nevada,
to produce estimates of the wind conditions when the lake
was present. "I'm trying to use the beach features-gravel,
sand, boulders-to reconstruct the wind climate of 13,000
years ago," he explains. "Basically, if you come
upon a beach made of sand, you know it didn't take much
wave action to move those sand grains. A beach strewn with
cobbles and boulders, on the other hand, had much larger
waves impacting the shore."
The beach deposits
can, therefore, be related to wave activity and ultimately
to how strongly the wind blew so many years ago, and that
wind is of great interest to climate change researchers
developing global circulation models. "This will hopefully
become a reliable way to check their wind estimates, says
Adams. "So far, they don't have a good way to do that."
Jim
Brock: Rolling on the River… If
the Truckee were a big river, there might not be such a
fuss. But in northern Nevada, everyone from developers to
environmentalists wants a share of the Truckee's water,
and it's a challenge to meet their needs. Aquatic ecologist
Jim Brock has been studying the Truckee for more than 15
years and, in that time, has come up with some important
ways to measure its health and guide its management.
Much of Brock's
work has focused on a computer simulation model of the Truckee's
water quality, a tool that helps managers make crucial decisions
on when, for example, to release more water to help fish
populations or to retain more flow for water quality purposes.
But, like any tool, the model is only as good as its parts,
and Brock is constantly working to improve it. "My
expertise is really in figuring out what data we need to
make the model more certain and in designing the research
instruments we need to get those measurements." To
that end, he's currently involved in a study of how riverside
vegetation affects the climate factors used in the model.
"Weather data from the Reno airport is not necessarily
going to apply all along the river. The right correction
factors are going to make the model a more accurate tool
for predicting future conditions."
Dr.
Mary Cablk: Vive la différence…
As an ecologist
with an emphasis on wildlife, Dr. Mary Cablk is, in her
own words, something of an anomaly at DRI. But instead of
her field being separate from the atmospheric physics, hydrology,
geology, and archaeology going on at the Institute, she
says it's actually integrated with all of them. "I'm
involved in a huge variety of research projects," says
Cablk.
"My work is all over the board." That work includes
wildlife surveys, environmental impact statements, computer
modeling, and remote sensing, all part of interdisciplinary
efforts to better understand the world as a whole, and not
just piece by piece.
That, says Cablk,
can mean interacting with a variety of agencies. For example,
she is working with Heavenly Ski Resort and the U.S. Forest
Service to survey a local population of American Pine Marten,
which are members of the weasel family. Their forest habitat
can be affected by human activities such as development
or logging. She's also working with the military at the
Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twenty-nine Palms,
California, studying fringe-toed lizards. "There are
five species of these lizards in the desert southwest, and
all but this one has some type of protection. The Marines
have had the foresight to realize that this lizard may end
up there too."
- Jackie Allen
