Dr. Walter Zachritz II, an environmental engineer with international experience in wetlands management, arid lands wastewater treatment, and biomass energy conversion processes, has been appointed executive director of the Desert Research Institute's Center for Arid Lands Environmental Management (CALEM), DRI President Stephen G. Wells announced.
Zachritz, who will be located at DRI's Las Vegas campus, will head up the newly established program to focus the institute's wide variety of scientific disciplines on specific arid lands programs, Wells said. CALEM already has a program of ecosystem management in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense to devise environmental management programs for preservation of ecosystems in desert training areas.
DRI's new center director is looking forward to the variety of research opportunities he can see in southern Nevada. "Las Vegas is a prime example of an interface between arid land and urban use, and there are a lot of opportunities to look at some of the challenges that interface can create-dust, encroachment, wastewater disposal, the role of the Las Vegas Wash," Zachritz said.
"I want to engage the scientists from various disciplines at DRI on these issues, as well as expanding our collaborative efforts with other researchers in this region."
Recruited from his position as assistant director of the Southwest Technology Development Institute at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, Zachritz is currently working on a feasibility study of using wastewater to establish man-made forests in Egypt.
Other recent work has included studies related to establishing wetlands to clean wastewater, combining biomass and natural gas for power generation, improvement of water quality control systems for aquaculture, and numerous projects for minimizing and managing wastes for industrial and agricultural operations in arid environments.
What is CALEM?
DRI's new Center for Arid Lands Environmental Management
addresses environmental management issues affecting desert
ecosystems around the globe in an integrated and innovative
way. Typically, CALEM brings together DRI scientists who
specialize in looking at how impacts on individual ecosystem
components-air quality, water supply, and soil
conditions-might effect an entire desert ecosystem. This
approach focuses on the processes that link those individual
components together with the aim of developing predictive
capabilities about the consequences of natural events and
human activities.
Another approach to arid lands management being developed by CALEM researchers is based on a program known as "Alternative Futures." Collaborating with researchers from other institutions, DRI scientists are combining socioeconomic models with geological information to predict the effects of population growth on the Mojave Desert in 10, 20, or even 30 years.