Heather Emmons, DRI PIO, heather.emmons@dri.edu, (775) 673-7313,
(702) 743-3435 (cell)
Dr. Scott Hauger, Vice President for Government and Business Relations, scott.hauger@dri.edu, (702) 862-5303
All DRI News Releases available at: http://news.dri.edu/
DRI hosts Chinese for workshop on desert environments and desertification
Reporters and Editors, Please Note:
WHO: Desert Research Institute and the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental Science
and Engineering Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
WHAT: Holding the second Sino-US Workshop on Desert Environments and Desertification
WHERE: Desert Research Institute, 2215 Raggio Parkway, Reno, NV
WHEN: Monday, July 11 - Wednesday, July 13
Members are available to media for interviews on Monday and Wednesday.
HOW: Six environmental researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences will be
visiting the Desert Research Institute to attend the Second Sino-US Workshop on Desert
Environments and Desertification. The visitors are all faculty members from China’s Cold and
Arid Regions Environmental Science and Engineering Research Institute, located in Lanzhou,
China. Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu Province, is a city of some three million
people. Located on the Yellow River in north central China, just to the south of arid and
desert lands, Lanzhou resembles northern Nevada because it is characterized by terminal lakes
and basin watersheds.
Led by the institute’s director, Dr. Wang Tao, the Chinese scientists will work with DRI
faculty members to develop joint research projects that center on issues of desertification,
arid land degradation and the restoration of degraded lands. They will participate with DRI
faculty in a series of scientific presentations and workshops. They will also make field
trips to examine the Truckee River watershed from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake and to see first
hand the geology of the eastern Mojave Desert and Death Valley. The visitors will tour DRI
campuses in Reno, Las Vegas and Boulder City, with a side trip to see Hoover Dam.
The visit of Chinese faculty members to Nevada is the return of a visit of DRI faculty members
to Lanzhou last October where the first workshop was held. Since that time, researchers from
both institutions, together with colleagues from China’s Lanzhou University’s Center for Arid
Environment and Paleoclimate Research, have been working via the Internet to develop research
concepts. During the second workshop, the research partners will work to establish a mutual
knowledge of each others’ capabilities and interests, and will further develop their research
concepts into formal research proposals that can be evaluated for funding by government
agencies in the U.S. and China that are concerned with environmental science and the
conservation and sustainable development of desert and arid lands.
BACKGROUND ABOUT DRI'S AFFILIATION WITH CHINA: DRI has collaborated with Chinese
scientists for more than a decade on environmental issues and studies, which has generated a
steady stream of Chinese graduate research students to DRI's Reno and Las Vegas campuses. DRI
has signed three memorandums of understanding and is involved in four research agreements with
China.
ABOUT DRI: A nonprofit, statewide division of the Nevada System of Higher Education,
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 more than 300 research projects at DRI annually. DRI generates $45 million in
total revenue consisting predominately of competitively won research contracts and grants. The
State of Nevada provides critical funding in support of DRI's administration, operations and
maintenance, through the Nevada System of Higher Education's budget. While DRI’s portion of
the NSHE budget is less than 1 percent, the institute leverages these funds to enhance its
competitiveness.
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