DRI

The Harold J. Kruse Farming and Environment Award was established in 2022 by Stephanie Kruse, DRI Foundation Trustee, to honor her father’s legacy and recognize his farming business sense. Mark Hausner, PhD, Monica Arienzo, PhD, and Rachel Kozloski, PhD, are the 2025 recipients for their project “Irrigating with Reclaimed Wastewater: do Microplastics Degrade Agricultural Soils.” The post Study on…

With extreme weather increasing across the world, scientists are striving to help critical infrastructure, such as water management systems, adapt. On the U.S. West coast, where both periods of prolonged drought and intense atmospheric river storms are common, effective water management can be particularly tricky. One strategy water managers are utilizing is known as Forecast Informed Reservoir O…

DRI’s STEM Education Program is pleased to announce its Fall 2026 Educator Professional Development training series in Reno, offering free, hands-on learning experiences. These trainings will equip educators with engaging STEM resources, classroom-ready curriculum, current research on Nevada’s desert ecosystems, and connections to Nevada's workforce needs. The trainings are open to formal and inf…

The Native Resilience project at DRI is pleased to announce the release of a new eBook, Holding the World in Balance: Indigenous stories of climate, care and continuance. This open-access publication is collection of journalism, poetry, fiction, and artwork produced by Indigenous writers, artists and storytellers on the topic of climate change. The book includes prompts for creative activities to…

DRI and OpenET are partnering with the Upper Colorado River Commission and the Bureau of Reclamation to expand evaporation monitoring on the Upper Colorado River Basin's largest reservoirs. This summer, new monitoring stations are being established on Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa, and Navajo Reservoirs. The initiative follows the success of the Lake Powell evaporation monitoring project – one of the …

Dr. Lynn Fenstermaker, DRI Research Professor Emeritus, has generously funded the annual DRI Career Growth Award with the goal of assisting a DRI early career scientist who has developed a sound plan to grow their career and would benefit from financial support to bring the plan to fruition. The post Empowering the Next Generation: Dr. Lynn Fenstermaker Launches DRI Career Growth Award appeared f…

The Western U.S. is experiencing periods of increasingly intense drought, and higher temperatures are exacerbating the issue by drawing even more moisture from plants and soils into the atmosphere. We see the results in the ever-expanding wildfire footprint, with many of the region’s largest recorded wildfires occurring over the last decade. One DRI scientist is innovating a new way to monitor wa…

DRI is excited to offer a new opportunity to go “behind the science” with tours of the Reno or Las Vegas DRI campus. These tours will provide a behind the scenes look at DRI science in action. Attendees will hear directly from DRI scientists, tour labs, experience technology demonstrations, and learn more about current research projects. The campus tours will cover a variety of research topics - …

Rain-on-snow storms have been challenging for emergency managers to forecast and prepare for due to limited understanding about how the snowpack responds to rain. A new tool directly addresses this problem by utilizing hourly soil moisture data from the SNOwpack TELemetry Network (SNOTEL) to provide insight into how the snowpack is responding to a storm in near real-time. The post A New Tool Can …

Mountain weather is famously unpredictable, with storms rolling in at a moment’s notice and one part of a mountain experiencing sleet while others nearby get rain or snow. Even small changes in elevation can impact the type of precipitation received from the same storm. Scientists are learning more about how winter storms change across time and space thanks to Mountain Rain or Snow, a NASA-funded…

The DRI Foundation is honored to announce that DRI recently received a generous donation from the estate of Elizabeth “Betty” Gallifent for the Betty & John Gallifent endowment. The Gallifent Endowment provides essential unrestricted support to advance DRI strategic priorities, such as the Innovation Research Program (IRP). The IRP provides essential seed funding for early-stage research projects…

On Friday, April 17th, 17 graduate students presented their research at DRI’s Reno campus for the annual poster presentation session. Organized by Kathleen Rodrigues, PhD, Assistant Research Professor of Luminescence, the event offers an opportunity for DRI-affiliated graduate students to network with each other and with DRI faculty, hone their presentation skills, and showcase the research they’…

Trey Flowers, Ph.D., P.E., joined DRI in March as the new Executive Director of the Division of Hydrologic Sciences. He brings a wealth of expertise in hydrology research and water resources management, having previously worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the B…

This April, we are celebrating STEAM - science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics - at DRI. Both the STEM Education Program and Nevada Robotics are dedicated to ensuring that Nevada educators are empowered to bring high-quality, hands-on STEM learning to their classrooms and that every Nevada student has the confidence and skills to thrive in our technology driven world. Community sup…

Last month at the Nevada Museum of Art, a few hundred K-12 teachers from across Nevada gathered on a Saturday morning to contemplate STEAM—the idea that students’ understanding of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) can be complemented and strengthened by incorporating the arts. The 2026 NV STEAM Conference, cohosted by the Desert Research Institute (DRI), also included a Frid…