DUSTBUSTERS; PLANTS TARGET OF RESEARCH.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

In a tumbleweed-studded old farm field under an Air Force Plant 42 flight path, research scientists are keeping a close watch on mesquite, saltbush and creosote bush seedlings.

They measure the temperature of the soil beneath them, the humidity of the air around them, the wind that blows over them. Beige plastic cones over the tiny shrubs keep away hungry jackrabbits and nighttime chill.

Across a dirt road, other scientists are keeping an eye on plots of bare dirt coated with commercial chemical inhibitors with names like Soil Seal and Hydro Bond. Periodically, they bring out a portable wind tunnel to blow air at the dirt at up to 70 mph, collecting and measuring the dust that blows off.

It's all part of a scientific program to find ways to restore denuded and eroded desert, aimed at preventing a recurrence of the towering dust storms that eight years ago grew so bad they presented a health hazard to the Antelope Valley.

``The desert now can be destroyed in a matter of minutes with modern machinery,'' said Rob Farber, a senior research scientist with Southern California Edison, one of the sponsors of the tests. ``If you want to restore it naturally, it takes at least a quarter of a millennium.''

Farber and other scientists from universities, private industry and governments established the test station on Los Angeles airport department land to search for ways to more efficiently grow native desert plants on land stripped clear by farming, construction or fire.

The test station was the scene Tuesday for a scientific symposium, as researchers gathered under a tent set up beside a sod farm to hear about the ongoing research and examine the test plots.

The symposium was sponsored by the Antelope Valley Dustbusters Task Force, a combination of government, industry and academia created in 1991 to try to stem the dust storms that darkened valley skies, buried fences and blinded motorist to cause chain-reaction pileups.

The Dust Bowl-like conditions were largely the product of drought combined with wide expanses of abandoned farmland, which had been stripped decades earlier of drought-resistant sagebrush and other native plants. Wild grasses normally cover the old farmland, but sprouted too thinly because of below-average rainfall in 1989, 1990 and 1991.

On one day in 1991, a Lancaster monitoring station measured 780 micrograms of dust in a cubic meter of air - more than five times the federal limit.

In an $800,000 effort, the Dustbusters planted barley, saltbush, buckwheat and California poppy seeds over 2,500 denuded acres west of Lancaster. The planting came in time for unusually heavy spring rains in 1992, and the valley has not failed federal air quality standards for dust since.

But researchers say that their efforts in 1992 were aided tremendously by the heavy spring rains. Plantings done in 1994, when the rainfall was normal, were much less successful.

That is the reason for the research station: to devise methods that governments and land owners can use to halt erosion, and to estimate their costs.

``There are still some important unanswered questions we need to address before we can present what we call a `cookbook' of solutions,'' Farber said.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Chat Cowherd of the Midwest Research Institute explains how a wind tunnel works during a press conference.

(2) Rich Campbell of U.S. Department of Agriculture examines plants under study by researchers.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer