Congressman Jim Gibbons to visit DRI's Reno Campus Friday for tour, briefing

Contacts: John Doherty, DRI PIO John.Doherty@dri.edu
Reno: 775-673-7313 Las Vegas: 702-862-5414

All DRI News Releases available at: http://news.dri.edu/

April 13, 2004

Nevada Congressman Jim Gibbons will visit the Desert Research Institute's Northern Nevada Science Center in Reno on Friday, April 16, touring DRI's labs and receiving updates on a number of institute research programs. Gibbons' tour will include "suiting up" in a laboratory clean suit to enter DRI's Clean/Cold Analysis Lab. He also will visit the Soil Characterization Laboratory involved in Desert Terrain Analysis projects for the Department of Defense, and the Water Analysis Laboratory, which analyzes samples from Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River. Gibbons' tour will involve briefings on initiatives concerning the impact of flooding on military training facilities and combat operations in arid environments, and an update on the plans for DRI's Dandini Research Park.

Following the tour, Gibbons will join DRI staff in the Stout Conference Center to discuss their research. Gibbons, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, led the effort to authorize funding for a major DRI research effort to apply knowledge of desert ecosystems toward several objectives related to military activities in desert lands. These include:

Maintaining a realistic desert training experience as these areas are heavily traveled and changed by armor and infantry activities;
Applying new technologies to improve the success of combat operations in desert terrain, such as selection of low dust, low visibility surfaces for landing sites or vehicle travel;
Anticipating flash flood impacts and other pertinent terrain responses to intermittent precipitation events in arid regions as they affect military operations; and
Maintaining ecological sustainability in desert training areas.

Gibbons also has been pushing legislation to remove land use restrictions on the institute's 470-acre Dandini Research Park surrounding the Northern Nevada Science Center and Truckee Meadows Community College. Once the restrictions are removed, DRI will be free to attract the research arms of private firms, organizations and government agencies to locate in the park for collaborative research efforts.

A nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale. Nearly 500 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct some 150 research projects at DRI annually. More than 85 percent of DRI's annual $37 million operating budget consists of research grants and contracts obtained by its scientists. The balance is received from the state of Nevada for administrative costs.

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