Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Chinese scientists on tour of Nevada

They looked and acted like tourists.

The six men from China snapped photographs and excitedly asked questions -- but they were a mile and a half away from the Strip at the Desert Research Institute.

They were not on vacation; they were learning about how DRI scientists measured gamma radiation in the atmosphere.

The scientists are touring Nevada as part of a 11-day conference with Desert Research Institute to develop several joint research products looking at everything from the quality of desert soil to air pollution.

"We are hoping we can exchange useful data and information and scientific ideas," said Wang Tao, director of the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute in Lanzhou, China.

Tao said his institute has looked to the DRI as a leader in the field for the last 20 years. The Desert Research Institute has developed cutting-edge technology that can be used to measure many of the environmental issues with which China is now grappling as a result of its massive population growth.

The international collaboration is one of several programs DRI scientists have instituted over the years, leading some of its leaders to joke that the facility is better known outside Nevada than within it.

The collaborations range from joint research projects to humanitarian missions aimed at improving local living conditions. They have recently brought Nevada scientists to such places as Ghana, Mali and Niger in West Africa, Ethiopia, Peru, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Antarctica.

"That's our mission," DRI President Stephen Wells said as he escorted the Chinese group around DRI's Las Vegas facilities at Swenson Street and Flamingo Road. "We want to bring forward technology that will help people improve lives, both here in Nevada and around the world."

DRI personnel have worked in West Africa since the 1990s teaching people how to locate water and properly dig wells, Michael Young, DRI deputy director for hydrological sciences, said. The institute is also working on developing a groundwater monitoring system to prevent the spread of disease.

The West African Water Initiative, which sends DRI scientists and students to Africa and brings African students to DRI about three to four times a year, is in conjunction with the Conrad Hilton Foundation and World Vision International, Young said.

Young said nothing he does as a research scientist beats the feeling of actually finding a well.

"To have water right there makes a huge difference in their lives, and it's great to be a part of that," Young said.

Most of DRI's forays into other countries have happened through serendipitous meetings, scientists said.

Vic Etyemezian, a DRI research professor in the division of atmospheric sciences in Las Vegas, traveled to Ethiopia last fall as a favor to a former DRI post-doctoral student, Ali Yimer. Now working for Clark County Air Quality Control, Yimer asked Etyemezian to help his home country evaluate its air quality. The famine- and drought-plagued country had no measurements regarding how good or poor its air quality was, Etyemezian said.

DRI paid for his travel and Etyemezian volunteered his vacation time to spend a month collecting air quality data in conjunction with the Ethiopian Enviromental Protection Agency. The data showed a major need for Ethiopia to better monitor its air quality status and to take mitigating action to curtail pollution, Etyemezian said. He's hoping a paper he's publishing on the study will help the country get funding for an air quality project.

"Air quality is not seen as important as famine and drought," Etyemezian said. "But if you are exposed on a daily basis (to poor air) it does take a toll on a big population over time. It's just not as dramatic."

Barbara Holz, a DRI archeologist and physical anthropologist in Las Vegas, said she came across the chance to study some ancient human remains in Peru by answering a class advertisement in an archeology journal for the California Institute for Peruvian Studies. The institute invited her to come and study a collection of remains from the southern coastal region of Peru.

By studying the remains, Holz said, she may be able to determine what kind of diseases the community suffered, providing further insight into the ancient culture.

Alan Gertler, a DRI research professor who just returned to Reno from an air quality study in Jordan and Israel, initially became involved in the Middle East through a Washington, D.C., lobbyist who was working for both UNR and Hebrew University. That connection led to a six-year study in Cairo, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and then the recent project in Jordan, Gertler said.

Gertler hopes the collaboration between Israel and Jordan to overcome their joint air pollution issues will lead to cooperation in other areas.

"By developing a scientific collaboration they have moved one step closer to being able to work together on other things," Gertler said.

Glenn Berger, a DRI research professor who is about to embark on the second ever trans-Arctic expedition as an expert in dating ice cores, said collaborating with other scientists from around the world was also the only way researchers will be able to get a true picture of global climate changes.

"Science is synergistic," Berger said. "... So the more cooperative work you do the more progress you make."

Wells said he saw the collaboration with Tao's institute as a "cultural and scientific exchange" where DRI scientists were able to share the advanced technology they have while also learning from the Chinese scientists about the problems they are facing. Eight DRI scientists visited Tao's institute last October.

The environmental problems Chinese officials are facing now are similar to those Nevadans have been dealing with for years, both Wells and Tao said. The Lanzhou area of China is very similar to the Northern Nevada landscape.

For nearly five decades, the Chinese government didn't give a lot of thought to the effect the country's explosive growth might have on the environment, Wang said.

The overuse of land has led to low water supplies and poor soil, Tao said, raising concern about how the land will be able to sustain the quality of life for future generations. Now that the government is beginning to pour money into scientific research, Tao and his colleagues are looking for ways to stop or at least slow the rapid degradation of his region's desert lands and prevent further pollution.

Tao and his colleagues said they were especially impressed with DRI's laboratories and hope to mirror some of the techniques and equipment scientists here are using.

"The modern equipment makes research work much more efficient," Tao said, adding that his institute would like to send some of its doctoral students to work in DRI's lab.

Student exchanges are a key part of most of DRI's international collaborations, scientists said. Graduate students will often take classes at either UNR or UNLV and then work for one of DRI's grant-funded research projects.

Before arriving in Las Vegas, the Chinese scientists visited DRI's Reno campus and toured the Truckee River watershed from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. They were scheduled over the weekend to take a geological tour of the Mojave Desert and Death Valley and visit Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon.

By the time Tao's group returns to China Tuesday, he hopes to have concrete research proposals in place with DRI in order to pursue government funding from both the United States and China.

"I'm very confident that we will be able to do better work in the future" through the collaboration, Tao said.

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