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RESEARCHERS PROBE JORNADA'S MYSTERIES
Laura Huenneke and Kris Havstad's joint research office is by far the biggest at NMSU, and it has the best views. It also is overrun with wildlife: deer, coyotes and birds of prey; lizards, snakes and insects galore.
Huenneke and Havstad, '77, do their research at the Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research facility, northeast of Las Cruces. Hundreds of thousands of acres provide control and manipulation areas in which the ecological processes of deserts can better be understood, and from that understanding, better land management practices may be implemented.
Though they both have conventional offices on the campus of NMSU, Havstad and Huenneke are in their element on the Jornada, where they help coordinate the efforts of dozens of other researchers who are trying to understand how the desert came to be and where it is going.
The Jornada, Huenneke says, is an unfolding mystery in which scientific researchers are regularly involved as plot-advancers. They seek clues from the shrubs and wildlife, from the run-off and drought, from the highlands and lowlands, from the present and the past - all of which provide a window to the future.
The land on which Havstad and Huenneke work is partly owned by the federal government and partly owned by NMSU. The U.S. Department of Agriculture employs Havstad to oversee the Jornada Experimental Range, which was established back in 1912. Huenneke, a professor in NMSU's biology department, oversees the Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research program, which began in 1981 and comprises study areas both on the experimental range and on the NMSU-owned Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center (College Ranch).
Through the years - and particularly in the past decade - the borders of those properties have become less and less meaningful as researchers work side by side and set up experiments wherever the data sets are likely to be most revealing.
"The partnership," Huenneke said, "works to everyone's advantage."
"The boundaries just aren't an issue anymore," Havstad said, simply.
What is at issue, Huenneke said, is the research. The Jornada plays host to long-term experiments designed to increase understanding about: how different elements in the desert environment compete for water and make use of what they receive; how grazing affects the desert landscape; how nitrogen is carried through the atmosphere and deposited; how wind manipulates the land and vegetation; how different species of flora interact; how resources are maximized in time of drought; how insects and small animals influence the land; and how humans (and man-driven enterprises) impact the environment.
The Jornada provides ample time and resources for both academic modeling and applied science, and Huenneke said the result is a better overall understanding of the desert environment's evolution, both naturally and in the wake of humans.
Though the majority of research funding at the Jornada comes from the National Science Foundation ($2.63 million) in six-year grant cycles and the USDA ($1.3 million per year), Huenneke said other funding sources include the Environmental Protection Agency ($1.2 million), the Department of the Interior ($495,000) and the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network ($285,000).
Those funds support nearly 100 research projects on or through the Jornada LTER.
Havstad said that with more funding, the Jornada could support scores more research projects, but even at current levels, he predicted a minimum of 100 more years of useful research being conducted on the land.
With data sets stretching back to the early years of this century and new data being gathered well into the next, Huenneke and Havstad said the Jornada represents a unique educational opportunity for NMSU students of many disciplines to learn about biodiversity in an evolving desert.
Jess Williams, '85, '97
BIOLOGIST REVEALS IN 258,000-ACRE 'OFFICE'
When the topic is the Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research project, there is little argument from the principal players about who has emerged as the rising star of the program: Laura Huenneke.
A professor of biology at NMSU, Huenneke loves the site as much for its research opportunities as its isolation. Her office in historic Foster Hall is crammed with books and journals and bathed in the graceless gray glow of a computer screen, but on the Jornada, her office is 258,000 acres of wind-blown desert landscape, and instead of restless students milling in the halls nearby, she shares her environment with soaring hawks, grazing deer and lizards skittering for shade.
Out on the land, Huenneke said, the title of "biologist" is drawn back toward its roots. In this environment, far from any notion of an ivory tower, she can get her hands dirty studying plots of land where the vegetation is being micro-managed in a real-world effort to understand how the desert lives, evolves and dies.
"The longer I'm here," she said, "the more I appreciate the Jornada's beauty and its scientific value."
Going back and forth from the Jornada to the classroom and her on-campus office, Huenneke said, helps her to maintain an ideological and practical balance that some academics must struggle to maintain. Her access to a living laboratory endowed with decades of accumulated data makes her a better teacher, a better historian and a better scientist, she said.
On the teaching front, Huenneke - winner of the 1994 NMSU Donald Roush Award for Teaching - said the Jornada provides both undergraduate and graduate students a much better grasp of ecological principles than the classroom. In addition, she said, the students have the opportunity to apply "sound scientific understanding to management problems by working in the field."
For these reasons, among others, Huenneke's star is rising among the 15 LTER collaborators from 10 governmental and educational institutions who share research space on the Jornada. Her proximity, her passion and her commitment to the project have impressed her peers and colleagues, most of whom agree that she is the next logical choice to oversee the research program under the next grant cycle from the National Science Foundation.
The NSF periodically re-evaluates the Jornada from a scientific research standpoint. Since 1991, the administration of the grant has been managed long-distance from Duke University in North Carolina. When the grant cycle turns again in 2000, most bets are that Huenneke will step into the administrative role from her NMSU office.
She views the prospective change philosophically.
"It makes sense to do the administration of the grant from NMSU," she said, "and I'm eager to ensure that NMSU researchers and students continue to have access to our world-class research programs, but I also realize that in taking on administrative duties, I will take away from my already limited amount of time in the field. The trade-off makes sense, but I do love the hands-on research."
Anyone who's met with Huenneke in both the academic and Jornada environments knows that her smile comes more easily out in that wind and sun, surrounded by the glorious silence of a giant natural laboratory. It's difficult to believe that she will give up a minute of the time she spends in her favorite office.
Jess Williams, '85, '97
NMSU'S COLLEGE RANCH: WHERE CATTLE AND SCIENTISTS ROAM
Every day, thousands of drivers on Interstate 25 cruise through a vast desert laboratory, NMSU's College Ranch. Corrals are visible just east of the border patrol checkpoint north of Las Cruces.
Sharing an eastern border with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jornada Experimental Range, the 64,000-acre College Ranch stretches across I-25 to the Rio Grande. In 1927, an act of Congress set aside public land for NMSU range and livestock research.
Ox carts were the first vehicles to cross this terrain 400 years ago. El Camino Real, the trade route that linked Santa Fe with Chihuahua, Mexico, passed through the present-day College Ranch.
Today, scientists and students from around the world trek to the ranch to do research on range management and cattle nutrition and breeding.
"The College Ranch, along with our Corona Range and Livestock Research Center, gives us a resource that definitely is a draw for students within the state as well as desert areas of the world," says Bobby Rankin, head of NMSU's animal and range sciences department.
NMSU students in almost every life science discipline have studied the plants, animals, soils and wildlife here.
"The College Ranch is a unique lab," says former NMSU researcher John Winder, '78, '79, who studied desert cattle genetics there from 1988 to 1995. "It's a nice tool for studying ecological processes in the fairly fragile environment of the Chihuahuan Desert."
The property, which is open to the public, also draws weekend visitors who enjoy photography, hiking, rock climbing, hunting and off-road recreation.
"It's peaceful, but not as isolated as you might think, being 25 miles from town and 15 miles of that on dirt roads," says Debra Bailey, '72, married to ranch foreman Calvin Bailey, '70. "Our kids (Scott, '97, and Rebecca) grew up meeting people from all over the world - South America, Africa, Mexico. They thought everyone had friends from Africa."
To make sure research runs smoothly, Calvin maintains fences and windmills and helps students improve their livestock handling skills. "We're basically managed as a regular ranch in New Mexico," he says. "In drought years, we reduce our numbers." To protect rangelands during the most recent drought, cattle herds were cut by nearly two-thirds.
Range research at the College Ranch, led by Reldon Beck and Jerry Holechek, animal and range sciences professors, focuses on rangeland rotation and stocking rates in the Chihuahuan desert.
Some of the ranch's most prized four-footed residents are registered Brangus cattle, the product of 30 years of careful breeding and management. Milton Thomas, a physiological geneticist with NMSU's Agricultural Experiment Station, will study DNA from Brangus and Angus bulls, searching for genes that regulate reproductive and growth hormones.
Bulls that aren't chosen for research or teaching are sold at an auction each spring. Cattle with the College Ranch brand, a key, end up on area ranches.
Though people and animals come and go, the Baileys plan to stay at the ranch. This year, Debra is looking forward to moving from current quarters, built in 1953, into a new modular home. But she has no plans to move to town. "Once I get on the dirt road, there's no traffic," she says, laughing. "All I have to worry about is cows jumping out at me."
D'Lyn Ford, '97
VIDEO PRODUCERS PROVE THEY, TOO, ARE SURVIVORS IN THE SAND
Video documentary producers Jeanne Gleason, '74, '74, '77, and Patrick Holian, '93, went to great lengths to tell captivating stories of life in the desert. The duo from NMSU's agricultural communications department logged trips to three continents to make "Survivors in the Sand," an award-winning documentary about arid lands.
The hour-long video examines the challenges of living in and sustaining arid lands in the American Southwest, Australian Outback and Middle East.
"Survivors in the Sand" takes viewers around the world to meet desert dwellers and scientists who are inventing ways to flourish in the largest ecosystem in the world Ð arid lands," Holian says.
One of Holian's favorite "Survivors" is Matt Magoffin, an Arizona rancher. Over three years, Magoffin and his family hauled more than 100,000 gallons of water to keep the endangered Chiricahuan leopard frog alive.
"This grassroots effort shows that a ranching economy and a healthy ecology are not mutually exclusive," Holian says.
NMSU scientists are involved in cutting-edge research in the American Southwest. Bob Sanderson, ecosystems scientist for NMSU's College of Agriculture and Home Economics, tracks the desert's evolution on sophisticated 3-D displays, based on range data collected over the years.
Kris Havstad, '77, adjunct NMSU professor and supervisory scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jornada Experimental Range, discusses in the video the value and challenges of managing arid lands.
Viewers can see a man-made savannah in Israel and aerial research in Australia, as well as the ancient cultures of Chaco Canyon, the Australian Outback and the biblical city of Soussiya.
Although Gleason and Holian's well-stamped passports could make taping documentaries seem like a jet-setting job, the reality involves plenty of menial work and even danger.
After 23 years at Agricultural Communications, Gleason jokes that she's progressed from carrying a writer's pen and steno pad to carting 11 bags of video equipment through customs. "I'm now a porter, not a reporter," she says.
In their video travels, Gleason and Holian have narrowly missed bombings, gunfire and volcanoes, though Gleason would rather dwell on the caliber of people they met in making "Survivors."
"Desert people are visionary, determined people who see beauty in an environment that initially would seem barren," she says. "They have a true passion for the land and get a faraway look in their eyes when they talk about it."
So does Gleason, whose eyes wander to an office wall covered with enlarged photos of people she has met on her travels.
After shooting was complete, Barbara Chamberlin, '93, '95, and C.C. Chamberlin, '91, '91, '94, provided finishing touches by adding "Survivors" graphics. Former NMSU staffer Arturo Ruiloba, '89, did supplemental camera work.
Since its release, the "Survivors" crew has earned a glittering array of top awards from international festivals in New York and Columbus, the Agricultural Relations Council and Agricultural Communicators in Education.
The documentary has aired on public television stations across the United States, the Discovery Channel in Israel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation network.
A near-capacity crowd of 170 attended a public premiere at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque in March.
"It was gratifying to see and hear the reaction from people firsthand," Holian says. Another reward of a story well-told.
D'Lyn Ford, '97
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