Crews work to extinguish a small wildfire on the hill above South Dakota
Mines that is home to the university’s new Living Lab. The fire caused between
$5,000-$10,000 in damage, but research will move forward on the site.
South Dakota
Mines’ new outdoor Living
Laboratory, which studies long-term erosion mitigation efforts, was hit by a grass fire
in early August. The fire damaged nine of the 26 study units set up in the
laboratory. The damage is estimated at $5,000-$10,000.
“They are repairable, but it will still take effort
and resources that we don’t currently have available to fix the damage,” says
Heidi Sieverding, a research scientist in the civil and environmental
engineering department at Mines. The laboratory was funded through a grant from
the West Dakota
Water Development District (WDWDD).
There may be a silver lining: the long-term living
laboratory study aims to improve mitigation efforts to reduce erosion and
improve soil health. Because fire is a natural part of the landscape,
researchers will incorporate the burned areas right into their ongoing study.
The fire did not burn all the plots, so the study can now look at the impact of
fire and fire suppression efforts on soil health and erosion control.
“We will definitely study how the test units reacted
to the fire,” says Sieverding. “We plan on adding the fire-scarring into the
learning experience.”
The Rapid City Fire Department needed about 700
gallons of water to extinguish the fire. This was sprayed on the area in a very
short window of time, and as a result, changed the landscape. “The test units
downhill from the fire captured nearly all the sediment that moved during the event.
Many test units performed well in much more extreme conditions than expected,” Sieverding
adds.
Mines officials give high praise to the Rapid City
Fire Department for putting out this blaze so quickly. “We’re very thankful for
the campus and community members who noticed the fire and alerted the Rapid
City Fire Department. We also greatly appreciate the quick response by
firefighters, which prevented the total loss of the laboratory,” says Mines
President Jim Rankin.