Tahoe scientist Charles Goldman wins DRI's top award

RENO -- Charles Goldman, a pioneering researcher at Lake Tahoe who has studied lakes and watersheds around the world, was named the winner Thursday of the Desert Research Institute's most prestigious annual award.

Goldman, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, who began studying Lake Tahoe's loss of clarity 43 years ago, will be presented March 11 with a $10,000 prize and a pure silver, minted medallion -- DRI's 2003 Nevada Medal.

"It's pretty exciting, a Californian getting the Nevada award," Goldman said Thursday from Davis.

"It shows how open minded those people are over there," he said with a laugh.

It marks the 16th Nevada medal the environmental research institute affiliated with Nevada's state university system has awarded in recognition of outstanding achievement in science and engineering.

Past winners include space exploration engineer James Van Allen, Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland, who unraveled the mystery of ozone hole depletion, and Carl Djerassi, whose chemical discoveries led to the oral contraceptive.

DRI President Stephen G. Wells said Goldman's persistence in documenting Lake Tahoe's environmental decline was a driving force in the dramatic increase in scientific attention to the plight of the lake over the past decade.

"Professor Goldman, through his Tahoe Research Group, was unrelenting in his efforts to attract the focus of the American scientific community and the federal government to the threat to the lake's future," Wells said in a statement Thursday.

"Charles is best known in the West for his Tahoe achievements, but his scientific accomplishments beyond this area have established an international reputation in limnology -- the study of fresh water ecologies," he said.

Goldman was the chairman of UC-Davis' Division of Environmental Studies from 1988-1992 and was founding director of its Institute of Ecology.

His work includes studies in Africa, Europe, Central America, south American and eight research expeditions to Lake Baikal in Siberian Russia. His expertise includes study of nutrients in lakes, the impact of climate and weather and the use and importance of long-term data to environmental research and management.

He won the National Science Foundation's senior fellowship in 1964 for his limnological research in the Arctic, a Guggenheim Fellowship in northern Italy in 1965 and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 1998 recognizing contributions that have advanced scientific understanding and benefited humanity.

Lake Tahoe's clarity has declined about one foot a year over the past four decades, due to a wide range of impacts from automobiles and air pollution to housing construction and soil erosion.

One of the clearest lakes in North America, visitors can still see down approximately 73.5 feet. But in 1968, the white plate used to measure depths could be seen as deep as 102 feet. Tahoe's deepest point is 1,636 feet.

Goldman said he's been working closely with DRI and scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno since former President Clinton called a presidential summit at the lake in 1997.

"I'm guardedly optimistic about the future of the lake," he said Thursday.

Over the past three years, he's been working to raise money to build a "world-class laboratory" at Lake Tahoe.

"Tahoe collects scientists from all over the world," he said.

Nearly 500 full- and part-time scientists and support staff conduct about $33 million worth of environmental research on about 150 projects annually at DRI, with labs in Reno and Las Vegas.

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On the Net:

Desert Research Institute: http://www.dri.edu/

Tahoe Research Group, UC-Davis: http://trg.ucdavis.edu/