The U.S. Army will continue to be involved in desert warfare for the foreseeable future. It is imperative that military equipment is designed and tested for use in this environment; that soldiers are trained to operate in the desert; and that they can accomplish their missions under the extreme conditions presented by this distinct operating environment. Understanding desert processes and terrain is fundamental to accomplishing these goals. Scientists have long debated demarcation and classification of deserts, considering many measurable factors. However, few have classified deserts in a way that specifically supports the military missions of operating, training, and testing. This research was undertaken to classify deserts using both physical and military variables and to develop a system that examines deserts from a military perspective. A panel of scientists and military officers developed and tested a model of warm and hot desert classification. The robustness of the model was tested at the Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. This work is a preliminary step toward a thorough examination of desert training and testing sites and potential conflict areas in desert locations throughout the world.
Arid regions present formidable challenges to the conduct of contemporary military operations. Fundamental geographic factors such as radiation balance, wind and dust, and unique terrain have affected the outcome of desert campaigns and battles throughout history. While the scientific community understands desert geography, the fundamental effects of environmental factors on military operations are rarely well known or understood. Some level of understanding is necessary to provide context for researchers solving military problems. The purpose of this paper is to offer a military context for the work in this volume. This study provides a brief summary of the influences selected environmental factors may have on modern military forces operating in hot desert environments. In particular, this research examines the effects of unique desert terrain, aeolian processes and dust, and radiation balance with regard to troops, equipment, and tactics; historical and modern examples illustrate these effects.
National defense is viewed by many as a uniquely military activity to fight and win our nation's wars. The world that we live in today causes us to rethink this idea as the realities of today's defense missions take shape. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of what is reshaping our image of national defense, but also emerging is the recognition that large-scale environmental degradation manifests security threats that can be global in scope. This paper examines this issue in the context of environmental security analysis. Although, the security implication of climate change is the issue that has brought new focus to this concept, this one environmental calamity is not the only environmental security challenge we will face in the future. The paper outlines an approach to analyzing environmental security threats on a regional and world scale. It is a fusion of science, political science, and strategic defense analysis. The product of this work is an environmental security analytical model. The secondary value of this paper is to advance the debate and discussion of environmental security as a fundamental component of strategic defense analysis.
Potential military applications of geology became apparent in Europe by the late eighteenth century, notably to Napoleon Bonaparte. In the United Kingdom, nineteenth-century practice was commonly to teach elementary geology to army officer cadets, and in twentieth-century conflicts to deploy a single uniformed geologist as a staff officer within each major regional headquarters, initially leaving terrain analysis to geographers. In Germany, considerably greater use was made of uniformed geologists serving as teams within all theaters of military operation in both world wars, generating a wealth of data now published or accessible in national archives. In the United States, a few military geologists were appointed to serve in uniform in France during World War I, but during World War II, a far greater number were civilians, based within a Military Geology Unit of the U.S. Geological Survey at Washington, D.C. Despite different organizational backgrounds, and irrespective of nationality, military geologists have addressed similar geoscience problems.
The United States Army has been a functioning entity for nearly 240 years and throughout those years has faced changing military threats. We focus here on when, where, and why military installations, primarily those of the Army, were created and placed on the landscape, and we examine some of the ways in which their situation changed as the country shifted from a domestic protection stance to a more internationalist projection-oriented operational philosophy. The 1790s, the 1890s, and the 1990s each presented challenges-but of very different types. Were we responding to external or internal threats? What were the needs of the era? Were they focused on materiel production, on leadership and training, on protecting our coastlines, on protecting travel routes within the country, or on preparing to project force hundreds or thousands of miles outside the United States?At one time, one or more of these differing concerns were the driving reasons behind the establishment of a military installation. The current "landscape" of installations reflects a response to these differing threats across our entire nation's history. This is why the U.S. Defense Department has recently been reviewing the inventory of military bases, to determine if they are all still relevant and useful. Do we now have too many or too few installations? Or, are they in the wrong place to answer the current and emerging threats? Finally, what happens when an installation is believed to no longer be needed? When and how may an installation be converted to another life?
Dust storms, or haboobs, can have a significant effect on military operations in arid regions. Not only does dust cause maintenance problems and slow offensive ground operations, but it can also substantially disrupt air operations. This paper presents a historic vignette of how a dust storm contributed to the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, the mission undertaken to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980. The flight crews that were involved in that mission encountered a dust storm that was likely generated by thunderstorm activity in the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Weather forecasters were aware that dust storms were a possibility in the region, but they did not forecast haboobs. The pilots were expecting clear weather and had no contingency plans to cope with the adverse weather conditions. The dust storm caused confusion, slowed the helicopters, and greatly increased pilot fatigue. These factors appeared to have contributed to mission failure, and, as a result, the U.S. military later implemented many improvements in mission planning, pilot training, and weather forecasting techniques to manage the risk associated with operations in areas where dust storms are likely.
Military geosciences are concerned with using the broad scope of the earth sciences for military purposes. These purposes range from direct support for military operations to a broad spectrum of non-combat military activities and military land management applications. Historically, the focus has been on geology and geography, but other earth science disciplines such as geophysics, remote sensing, and geocomputation have become increasingly important as a consequence of technological progress made during the final decades of the twentieth century. The eighteen chapters in this volume address the critical aspects of the role of geosciences in military undertakings by focusing on historical perspectives, geoscience for military operations, and military environmental stewardship.
Afghanistan is a mountainous, arid country with limited surface water supplies. The complex geology in this country includes active tectonics and mountain ranges. Afghanistan is subdivided into three distinct hydrogeological areas: the Central Highlands, the Northern Plain, and the Great Southern Plain. Most groundwater is located in the Central Highlands, where water of sufficient quantity to meet the needs of the population is available primarily by digging wells into unconsolidated alluvial aquifers located in mountain valleys. A lack of sustainable, high-quality water supplies can have a negative impact on the ability to conduct military operations. An understanding of hydrogeological conditions is required in order to minimize exposures to natural and anthropogenic sources of contamination that may pose either acute or chronic health risks to military forces. This same scarcity of potable water can have a negative impact on the local population. Projects that improve the quantity and quality of water available to both military forces and the local population are important to improve the overall stability of Afghanistan.
Airborne dust suppression is of critical importance to military operations conducted in desert environments. Airborne dust is commonly generated in the desert by surface and near-surface operations during operational, testing, and training missions. Currently, there is no standardized procedure for testing dust suppressants, and the U.S. military lacks a specific test operations procedure (TOP) designed to provide realistic testing of the performance and durability of commercial products sold for dust abatement. The primary purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for the future development of a TOP for testing dust suppressants applied to desert soils. Recommendations were developed from the evaluation of a polyvinyl-based synthetic polymer as a dust suppressant, which was tested at four test intervals over a 19-week period in the late spring and summer of 2008 at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground. The dust suppressant was applied at three separate test sites having different surface characteristics and soil properties ranging from loose, sandy gravel to gravelly sand, alluvial-fan soils to soft, sandy-silt, alluvial-plain soils. Each test site was subjected to a variety of traffic impact types consisting of an increasing number of cumulative passes by different vehicle types-including a low-flying helicopter, a light-weight armored tracked vehicle, and heavy-, medium-, and lightweight wheeled vehicles, plus pedestrian foot traffic. In addition to the sites of traffic impact, three types of control plots were concurrently tested to act as reference sites, as well as to evaluate the longevity of the suppressant, which included: disturbed and static (undisturbed) baseline plots and a static benchline plot. Surface soil and dust-suppressant physical properties were measured following each traffic impact in the form of shear strength and bearing capacity, plus dust-emission flux as measured by a Portable In Situ Wind ERosion Laboratory (PI-SWERL). Results from this study show that dust-emission flux and surface-strength measurements from a layout of control and traffic impact test plots provide a quantifiable and repeatable approach in measuring the efficacy of a dust suppressant for a TOP used by the U.S. Army.
Military lands are among the last places most people would list as being pristine. Withdrawn for training and testing, they are tucked away from public exploration, and the results of this isolation have been unexpected: The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) harbors more rare, threatened, and endangered species on its lands than any other landowner. Despite the vast acreage held in other public ownership, it is the combination of the "tragedy of the commons,"too little funding, and a multi-use mandate that have been the downfall of biodiversity on most non-DOD public lands. Simultaneously, private landowners permanently alter remaining lands at increasing rates. By these processes, the U.S. DOD is now in the position of being capstone stewards. Thus begins an exploration into the question: Does wilderness exist on military installations? In the United States, motorized vehicles are prohibited in federally designated wilderness. On military bases, there are areas where no vehicles may go, such as active air-ground impact areas. If a bomb falls where no tires tread, is it wilderness? The Korean demilitarized zone represents another example of the impact of human conflict and use, or nonuse. Here, the legacy of military actions has unexpectedly created an ecological refuge. Closer to home in the Mojave Desert of California, the juxtaposition of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and Joshua Tree National Park offers direct comparison between a landscape where people are prohibited and a landscape where people are encouraged. This paper is about the way in which we came to such an unexpected place by examining the trade-off between lands off-limits to civilians, and those where people are encouraged, with the benefits realized from keeping "out," drawing on examples from the United States and abroad. The objective is to stimulate lively discussion without necessarily coming to a right/wrong determination or judge whether or not credit is due.
Biological soil crusts, composed of soil surfaces stabilized by a consortium of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, lichens, and/or bryophytes, are common in most deserts and perform functions of primary productivity, nitrogen fixation, nutrient cycling, water redistribution, and soil stabilization. The crusts are highly susceptible to disturbance. The degree of perturbation is governed, at least in part, by the nature, intensity, and spatial and temporal distribution of the disturbance, as well as the soil type and soil moisture content at the time of disturbance. When disturbed, biological soil crusts lose their capacity to perform their ecological functions. Natural recovery of disturbed crusts can range from several years to millennia. Several strategies have been attempted to accelerate recovery of crusts. At present, artificial recovery is not economically feasible on large tracts of disturbed desert landscape. Management options available to the military on arid landscapes include: (1) eliminating or minimizing training in desert ecosystems, (2) avoiding critical seasons, (3) avoiding critical areas, (4) artificially restoring damaged crusts, and (5) considering desert training lands as "sacrifice areas." Given the need to train in environments representative of the locations of many current and projected world conflicts, the first option is untenable. At this time, the most plausible alternative is to consider desert training lands as "sacrifice areas." However, it is recommended that attempts be made to avoid critical seasons and areas inasmuch as logistically feasible, and that the military continue to support research into the development of cost-effective technologies for biological soil crust restoration.
Creating accurate soil maps at large scales using traditional methods is a time-consuming and expensive process. However, remote-sensing techniques can provide spatially and spectrally contiguous data in a timely manner. For this study, 20 root zone soil moisture maps derived from Landsat images during the growing season were used for the detection of soil boundaries. A split moving-window analysis along two demonstration transects in, respectively, a semi-arid desert and riparian area located in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico showed that remotely sensed root zone soil moisture can reveal subsurface trends that can be used to identify soil boundaries that do not have a strong surface expression. Overall, the use of multiple remotely sensed root zone soil moisture and Landsat images for soil boundary delineation shows great promise of becoming a valuable tool in the field of digital soil mapping.
The dynamic nature of coastal morphology and oceanographic conditions poses a particular challenge to transporting personnel and equipment across a land-sea interface, e. g., locating the position of potentially hazardous bathymetric features, and assessing the stability of beach staging areas over time scales ranging from hours to months. In addition, feedbacks among (1) nearshore bathymetry, (2) waves and nearshore circulation, and (3) underlying geology directly affect the morphology of the adjacent beach as well as the shoreline's response to storm events, resulting in localized erosional "hotspots." These hotspots are potentially hazardous for equipment and personnel staging along the beach, but they are not easily identifiable from a time-series of aerial photographs alone.We identify several environmental metrics necessary for the reliable prediction of potential coastal landing and staging hazards, including: (1) nearshore bathymetric gradients, (2) nearshore sediment volume, and (3) changes in shoreline and vegetation line position. Coupled with a quantitative understanding of the relevant coastal processes, these data allow an assessment of potential nearshore bathymetric hazards and realistic predictions of short-term shoreline stability and thus suitability for the temporary staging of equipment and personnel. These metrics are applied to Onslow Beach, North Carolina, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, the largest amphibious training ground in the United States, and they are used to identify potential amphibious transit and staging hazards along the entire coastal zone, from the beach out to similar to 11 m water depth.
U.S. military installations increasingly have become de facto bioreserves as the result of legacy and current land uses, urbanization, and historical siting of installations. The relative value of military lands as bioreserves compared to land holdings of other federal agencies is not proportional to total land area. Ironically, a significant reason that U.S. military installations have become important bioreserves is that they were not established with the purpose of conserving or extracting natural resources. This historical factor has resulted in a broad representation of U.S. ecoregions on military lands and largely has shielded those lands from the habitat loss and degradation that has occurred in surrounding regions due to urbanization, agricultural development, and other non-military land uses. Fort Hood, Texas, is used as a case study to illustrate the characteristics of military installations that fit the model for bioreserves as areas for conservation of biological resources and processes in the context of human use of the environment. A major current challenge for management of natural resources on military lands is that the value of U.S. military lands as bioreserves is increasing as surrounding habitats and natural communities continue to be degraded.
Department of Defense military land use of the desert southwest includes a wide spectrum of military weapons testing, force-on-force training, and various types of flight training. The desert southwest provides a critical asset for the U.S. military-open space. Installations in the desert southwest tend to be much larger than installations in other regions of the nation, with several exceeding 400,000 ha. This open-space asset has allowed the military to historically establish large training areas and ranges on installations and to define expansive air maneuver regions above these ranges and above the vast public lands of other agencies. It also offers critical training and testing areas that are analogs to similar worldwide environments where the military operates. Training and testing activities are conducted in the three-dimensional land and air space that replicates the modern battle space. Land and air space use is highly variable among installations depending on mission requirements. Natural resource management challenges include the large spatial extent of lands and air space under Department of Defense management, highly variable military land-use requirements, significant endangered species regulatory and conservation requirements, encroachment and Base Realignment and Closure requirements, competition for water resources, and climate change. Department of Defense natural resource managers attempt to meet these challenges through interagency cooperative agreements, integrated natural resource management plans, and Department of Defense sustainable range programs.
To assist U.S. Air Force archaeologists study and preserve cultural sites associated with early Native American inhabitants of the Nevada Test and Training Range, we have determined the late Pleistocene environments of nine playas on the range from surface deposits around the playas. Based on shoreline features such as barrier bars, wave-cut benches, and beach gravel deposits, the playas of Mud Lake, Gold Flat, and Kawich Lake contained pluvial lakes. Based on fossils, palustral clay sediments, paleospring, and seep deposits, the playas of Stonewall Flat, Indian Springs Valley, and Three Lakes Valley contained extensive wetlands. Two playas in Cactus Flat and one at Dog Bone Lake contain none of these surface deposits and are interpreted to have hosted seasonal lakes and grassy meadows, based on modern analogs in the Pahrana-gat Valley. Radiocarbon dates from Mud Lake, Gold Flat, and Stonewall Flat indicate these environments existed up to the beginning of the Holocene ca. 10,000 years before present (yr B.P.) and would have provided resources of fresh water, fish and game, edible and medicinal plants, fuel, and materials for the construction of shelter. As changing climate conditions from 10,000-8000 radiocarbon yr B.P. forced the contraction and eventual disappearance of these lakes and wetlands, basins with larger surface water budgets probably furnished early inhabitants with useful resources after the pluvial features in the smaller basins had disappeared.
Gullies are common features throughout the southwestern United States including Army training facilities such as the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. These gullies have depths up to several meters, which can restrict the mobility of troops and vehicles during training exercises. They also have the potential to grow in size, which can degrade training lands. At the upstream end, gullies usually begin with an abrupt headwall, and in the downstream direction, gullies also tend to terminate abruptly. In this paper, we hypothesize that the small extent of convective storms and significant transmission losses in channels promote the downstream disappearance of gullies. The role of these factors is tested by applying a geomorphic model in which storms occur within circular portions of the simulation domain and channel flow is lost to seepage up to a specified infiltration or seepage capacity in each grid cell. The net effect of these processes is to reduce the sediment transport capacity in the downstream direction relative to the case with an infinite storm size and no channel losses. The reduced sediment capacity alters the relationship between slope and drainage area for topographies at equilibrium. In addition, limited storm sizes can also produce disconnected areas of incision within generally depositional portions of the landscape.
Dryland channel networks share many similarities with channel networks in more humid regions, but they are also unique in having: extreme temporal and spatial variability in rainfall, runoff, and both hillslope and channel processes; poor integration between tributary and main channels; dominantly ephemeral or intermittent flow; and lack of equilibrium between process and form. Floods are likely to be particularly important in dryland channels, and riparian vegetation exerts a strong influence on channel processes and form. Land managers working in dryland channel networks particularly need to answer the following questions: What is stable? What is the role of disturbance? How do ecosystems depend on physical form and process?This paper explores methods for determining thresholds and resiliency within a channel network and suggests metrics that can be used to assess the condition of a channel segment or entire drainage network relative to management goals. The management metrics focus on flow regime, sediment supply, bed grain size, bedform configuration, width/depth ratio, bed gradient, channel planform, and extent and type of riparian vegetation. For each of these metrics, geological, historical, and systematic records can be used to define the natural range of variability for a particular channel form in the absence of direct land-use impacts. The range of variability present under land use such as military training activities can then be compared to the natural range to assess whether these activities are negatively affecting the dryland channel network. The Yuma Wash drainage in the Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, is used as a case study.
