‘Wizard of Oz’ of Weather Works Wonders in Wyoming : Environment: University researcher simulates conditions in one-of-a-kind laboratory.

He can make it rain. He can send the temperature plummeting 70 degrees. He can even turn night to day.

Tim Reeves can do all that and more by manipulating the row of computers and keyboards running the length of one side of his office.

The researcher, known as the University of Wyoming’s “Wizard of Oz,” controls and monitors the conditions in the concrete and metal structure in the middle of the large cavernous room below his office.

The one-of-a-kind laboratory, called an environmental simulator, has piqued the interest of U.S. officials and scientists from around the world who have toured the facility in the university’s Agriculture Department in southeastern Wyoming.

The chamber attempts to predict what will happen to a process or material under natural conditions. That’s achieved by modifying the climate in a structure 20 feet wide, 24 feet long and 10 feet deep.

The $5.3-million project, along with the prestigious Red Buttes Environmental Biology Laboratory, is cited by university officials as evidence of the school’s strong environmental programs. They hope to exploit those strengths when the School of Environment and Natural Resources opens in fall, 1994.

Built in 1988 with federal, university and private funds, the environmental simulator can reproduce any climate except polar. It was born from the desire to find a middle ground between large-scale field environmental experiments and small, “bench-scale” experiments in a normal lab setting.

Fitted with air conditioners, heaters, freezers and a steam generator to produce humidity, the simulator can produce temperatures from 15 below zero to 120 degrees above. Relative humidity up to 100% is possible.

Metal halide lamps duplicate sunshine, and rainfall simulators can dump five inches of water per hour if necessary to mimic nature.

Scientists interested in seeing how environmental conditions affect mining, for instance, can load up the simulator with soils and vegetation from mine sites and then make their own weather.

The simulator first housed an experiment, launched before the fledgling Western oil shale industry went bust, to test the permeability of oil shale waste. With that project wrapping up, researchers are considering new ventures and working on raising matching funds for a federal grant that would pay for an $18-million expansion.

Proposed experiments include using microorganisms to clean up toxic waste and evaluating water-treatment methods.

“This is a needed facility worldwide,” said Quentin Skinner, range management professor and one of the project’s directors.

Skinner, who saw in the simulator a chance to study the effects of coal mining in alluvial areas, sometimes refers to the facility as his big sand box. Other nicknames include “box of rocks.”

“Time is a real factor,” said Lee Bulla, another project director and head of the molecular biology department. “We can’t speed up or reduce time, but we can simulate conditions that would occur over time.”

The Legislature has pledged to pay up to 25% of the expansion that would involve building up to six additional chambers. And in 1990, the environmental simulator was one of three research projects to win approval of a federal grant that requires a 50% match.

So far, the university has received $900,000 in federal money for design work. Construction, depending on how quickly funds roll in, likely wouldn’t begin until 1997, Skinner said.

As the staff completes the first experiment conducted in the environmental simulator, members of the research team say their work yielded an important finding.

The project, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, tested the mining industry’s theory that water wouldn’t penetrate underground oil shale waste. In addition to the waste buried in the chamber, piles were buried at a Colorado site that served as an outdoor control point.

Reeves, a hydrologist, did much of the original work for the Department of Energy.