Drive down Buchanan Boulevard and take a look at the Desert Research Institute property across from the municipal golf course. It may look like nothing is going on there, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
On Oct. 4, the world-renowned research facility opened its new $1.2 million Underground Weighing Lysimeter Lab to visitors and staff, showing off a research lab for the precise measurement of the interactions among soil, water and plants in an arid environment.
By placing 51 yards of soil in what amounts to a steel tube with a series of portholes circling the cylinder at varying levels for the placement of instruments to take readings, scientists can measure pressures in the soil that affect the movement of water.
While some may question the need for understanding such scientific knowledge, Dr. Michael Young, deputy director of the institute's Division of Hydrologic Sciences, said that there are beneficial uses for the research.
"We have a very basic knowledge of dirt systems, so, at a basic level, we want to understand these pressures," Young said. "The questions that can be answered for land managers are how long does it take for the soil to restore itself and how long does it take for plants to be re-established."
The lab itself is a series of four free-floating soil canisters resting on large capacity balances that are linked together with passageways in an underground chamber.
The lysimeters, or canisters, were set about 10 feet below and flush with the ground surface. They do not come in contact with anything except the scale, including the side walls of the holes through which they were placed.
The free-floating aspect of the lysimeter is important if readings from the scale are to be accurate.
Additionally, being even with the ground surface prevents winds from affecting scale readings and prevents soil and other material from either collecting on the lysimeter surface or being eroded from it.
According to Young, experiments will start sometime next year, so the search is on for the soil that will be placed in the lysimeter.
In recent weeks, institute officials have met with city leaders to discuss the possibility of digging four large holes, or borrow pits, somewhere in a three-square-mile area south of U.S. Highway 93 and east of U.S. Highway 95 that would supply 90 yards of soil for the four lysimeters.
The excavation work will include taking samples of disturbed soil that would be stockpiled and used after a backhoe digs it out. For undisturbed soil, a lysimeter will be trucked to the excavation site and the soil around it would be removed. The lysimeter, minus its bottom plate, would be pushed down around the soil plug, and once it's filled, the bottom plate would be welded shut.
"We're searching for soil out in Eldorado Valley," Young said. "We want to get the right soil, something with settled clays, and it would be easier getting it from Eldorado Valley."
Although Eldorado Valley is a vast expanse of raw natural beauty, several jurisdictions and uses apply to the wide-open lands, something the institute is aware of.
"The real question, though, is not where's the right soil, but rather where's the right land," Young said. "We'd like for the land to be controlled by Boulder City. We're meeting with engineering officials about lands undergoing possible disturbance because we'd like to get to it before it gets disturbed."
Young said the need to find a pristine site with the right soil conditions is important because scientists want to go back during the year and monitor the soil where the samples were taken.
Young also said that once the lysimeters become fully operational next year, the first set of data should come in six to nine months or maybe sooner. "We think we may get some results, results that are usable, very quickly," he said.
The $3 million project, known as Scaling Environmental Processes in Heterogeneous Arid Soils, is jointly funded by the state and the National Science Foundation.
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