For immediate release: Aug. 14, 2007

Contact: Jill Stockton, UNR communications director, (775) 784-4611, jboudreaux@unr.edu; Greg Bortolin, DRI director of communications and government affairs, (775) 673-7465, 775-741-3648 (cell), Greg.Bortolin@dri.edu

Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada, Reno, combine forces to help save Tahoe’s clarity

RENO, Nev. – Ten years after the Lake Tahoe Presidential Summit, collaboration among Tahoe researchers has never been higher.

“That is one of the great legacies of President Clinton’s visit to Lake Tahoe in 1997,” says Glenn Miller, a professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Miller, along with several other faculty members of the University, as well as its Tahoe research partner, the Desert Research Institute (DRI), attended the Lake Tahoe Presidential Summit in 1997. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore’s visit to Tahoe brought unprecedented national and worldwide attention to the fight to save Lake Tahoe.

“It was such a group consensus-building effort,” Miller continues “It was probably the best consensus-building effort I’ve ever been involved in during my almost 30 years at the University of Nevada. And the consensus-building has carried through. The legacy of that 1997 summit is still with us today.”

Today, DRI and University of Nevada researchers – along with other academic institutions with active research agendas at Tahoe, such as UC-Davis – have combined forces in a winning effort to slow the decline in Lake Tahoe’s legendary clarity.

“It really is a united front,” says Jim Thomas, director of DRI’s Center for Watersheds and Environmental Sustainability. “For many years, there was some really fine research done at Lake Tahoe, but it was done in a bit of a vacuum. Now we’re looking at things from a much more collective perspective, and it’s made a difference.”

As Nevada and California commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum on Aug. 17 at 3 p.m. at Sierra Nevada College with a visit from President Clinton, it is worth noting that both the University and DRI have achieved substantive research gains at Lake Tahoe over the past 10 years.

University and DRI researchers have mobilized in all aspects, from water to ground to air.

DRI’s efforts include:

JIM THOMAS, director, Center for Watersheds and Environmental Sustainability, has worked to establish a network of water quality sampling stations in intervening zones around the lake. Intervening zones are areas where water flows directly into Lake Tahoe before entering a stream channel. Thomas and his fellow researchers have evaluated the impact of land use on runoff and the associated fine sediment and nutrient concentrations created from runoff, as well as the absorption of sediments beneath settling basins as well as pinpointing sources of fine sediments in the watershed. This work is considered crucial to future efforts at Lake Tahoe to maintain water clarity and health sediments in watersheds with surface water flow into the lake. 

ALAN HEYVAERT, hydrologist, has been actively involved with several important issues, including limnology, and the impacts of runoff on water clarity.

ALAN GERTLER, atmospheric scientist, has performed extensive air quality research in the basin, studying the impact of airborne particulates on the lake’s clarity and health of the forest ecosystem. Through a number of sampling stations around the lake, Gertler is determining whether air pollution from the Bay Area and the Central Valley of California is creeping to the lake and depositing airborne particulates such as nitrogen, phosophorous and other sediments into the Tahoe Basin.

KEN ADAMS, associate research professor, studied the extent of shoreline erosion at Lake Tahoe, detailing a broad view of changes in the shorezone and impacts to the lake over the last 60 years. Preliminary results suggest that some areas have undergone as much as 10 or 15 meters of erosion over the past 70 years, while others have remained relatively unchanged.

KELLY REDMOND, director of the Western Regional Climate Center, who is considered one of the region’s experts on Tahoe weather and climate change.

The University of Nevada’s research, among other things, has focused on assessing the health of Tahoe’s upper watershed; working with DRI faculty, they have also studied the relationship between fire, soil, runoff and water clarity; how to control assaults on forest health from the insect infestation such as bark beetles; development of science-based reintroduction strategies for Tahoe’s native fish; comprehensive studies of Tahoe’s seismology and fault structures; strategies for Tahoe homeowners to develop defensible space, conserve water and to fight the onslaught of invasive weeds, just to name a few.

In addition, with the creation of the Academy for the Environment, the University has a centralized academic and research entity to aid with coordination of science, as well as to further collaboration with other institutions through organizations such at the Tahoe Science Consortium, which comprises the community of scientists at Lake Tahoe. Jim Thomas from DRI and Michael Collopy, director of the Academy for the Environment, have taken lead roles in their institutions’ involvement in the Tahoe Science Consortium.

Individual University research projects includes:

WALLY MILLER, professor of natural resources and environmental science and associate director for research for the Academy for the Environment. Among Miller’s many research studies at Tahoe regarding the upper watershed, soils and transport of nutrients into the lake, is an important study conducted in the wake of the Gondola Fire near Heavenly Ski Resort earlier this decade. Miller’s research is considered a critical component into understanding how the recent Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe could impact water clarity.

KEN SMITH, research seismologist at the University’s Nevada Seismological Laboratory, is part of a team that for the first time recorded a cluster of 1,600 small earthquakes 20 miles beneath Lake Tahoe. The team also found that the cluster coincided with an unprecedented 8-millimeter uplifting of nearby Slide Mountain in 2004. Their work is considered vital to understanding Tahoe’s seismology and its potential impacts for the future. 

GARY BLOMQUIST, professor of biochemistry, has been at the forefront of an effort to improve Tahoe’s forest health through his studies of bark beetles, and what can be done to mitigate this devastating problem. Due to the drought of 1986-1994, Tahoe lost about 30 percent of its trees due bark beetle infestation. Blomquist has developed methods to inhibit/interfere with activities of the enzymes of bark beetles, and earlier this summer received a three-year grant for $400,000 from the National Science Foundation to continue his research on bark beetles.

GLENN MILLER, professor of natural resources and environmental science, was part of a groundbreaking effort at Lake Tahoe in 1997-98 that led to the banning of two-stroke engines on Tahoe’s water. Miller, an environmental chemist, found that two-stroke engines were impairing Tahoe’s clarity. The ban has led to a new generation of cleaner, more efficient jet skis and other personal watercraft at Tahoe.

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Nevada’s land-grant university founded in 1874, the University of Nevada, Reno has more than 16,000 students and four campuses with Cooperative Extension education programs in all Nevada counties. The University is listed as one of the country’s top 150 research institutions by the Carnegie Foundation, and is home to America’s sixth-largest study abroad program and the state’s medical school.