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For UNLV professor, groundbreaking work in soil, water field

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 30, 2009 at 6:14 am

From the Las Vegas Sun:

Dale Devitt is, as the joke goes, out standing in his field. This particular field (Devitt has several) is riddled with buried experiments in the form of tubes of soil, some with grass on top, some without. This is a sort of demonstration farm and outdoor laboratory on the far north side of town.

Devitt, who runs UNLV’s Center for Urban Water Conservation, is trying to determine whether turf can filter pharmaceuticals out of reclaimed water (read: processed sewage), trapping it before it can enter the ground water. (The answer, so far, appears to be yes, but Devitt cautions that the experiment still has two years to run.)

Devitt can look around and point to past projects. There’s a stand of trees, for instance — desert willows, mesquites, oaks and so on — most of the popular landscaping choices around Las Vegas. This was one of the first experiments Devitt ran out here. It compares the water usage of tree species. Mesquites, for instance, use more water than oaks, which use more water than willows. It sounds simple enough, comparing trees not only with one another but also with turf and shrubs, but it was groundbreaking work for a simple reason: The money has always been in agricultural research — not landscaping.

Read more from the Las Vegas Sun by clicking here.

June 30, 2009 · Filed Under Conservation

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