Trial run for terraforming?

Is the Us. Agricultural research station on top of the mountians in New mexico really a testing grounds for terraforming?

I have seen it, and there is vegetation and orchards on the top of the mountians. I'm not sure how they irrigate it, but it looks really amazing!

Do you have any information on this? Links and whatnot?

I doubt that this is anything to do with terraforming though. People are ALWAYS trying to improve agricultural techniques. At least we have been since the developments of irrigation.

Yeah, links or pics would be good. I've always been curious about terraforming. One thing I've always wondered about is whether it really would take hundreds or thousands of years to terraform a planet (Mars for example). It seems to me that it could be done quicker, just more expensive. For example, I've lived in the desert (west TX & So. Cal) for most of my life, and it's obviously always dry and arid. But if you go onto a golf course for example, the humidty will knock you down. I know that it's just a localized effect, but with enough water and fertilizer, couldn't you change, for example, a chunk of desert into a virtual rain forest or something? I haven't really done much research into it, just always pondered it.

Originally posted by cosmokatt7
Is the Us. Agricultural research station on top of the mountians in New mexico really a testing grounds for terraforming?

I have seen it, and there is vegetation and orchards on the top of the mountians. I'm not sure how they irrigate it, but it looks really amazing!

Where exactly are you talking about? What city in New Mexico?

New Mexico state university has several "Agriculture Experiment Stations" through New Mexico, so I'm wondering if you are referring to one of these stations, or something else.

If you are referring to the military base near Dulce, New Mexico, this would seem a more likely explanation for what they are doing there than some theories I have heard, but I have not been able to find any satellite or other aerial footage of the Dulce Base area. Do a google search for "Dulce Papers" if you don't know what I'm talking about.

From maps.google.com if you look in the Dulce, NM area you can see quite a bit of greenage in the hills surrounding Ducle, but you cannot zoom in on the area, and google has definitely used agricultural looking circles on their satellite maps to hide "sensitive" information and images at higher zoom levels.

So... as said... do you have any more information to share? You went to this place, right? How close could you get to the area you saw?

Terraforming is a pretty interesting science as we try to take what we know about Earth and adapt it to other places in the Universe. A very interesting article about terraforming can be found at this link. It discusses some of the scientific theory behind terraforming and a theory from an MIT undergraduate which may be (at this time, at least) the most likely way we could being a terraform of Mars.

I'm not sure where in New mexico, this research station is. It is a U. S.
government station, run by the dept. of Agriculture. Maybe it is near Taos N. M. I was on a Greyhound bus, traveling from EL Paso Texas to California. The bus passes right by this station, maybe even through it.

Another purpose for greencircles at Dulce, I thought of is that they might try/test to clean up radioactive soil from the past nuclear tests by using vegetation to extract certain elements...

...I thought about terraforming because this area is naturally arid ,and at an altitude. So it has been transformed from what it was originally. I think
I'df want to develop some techniques, even perfect some before trying
terraforming on another sphere....

Terraforming is the new War on Drugs: Costly with no social redeeming value. If it is terraforming it is not for Mars or any such thing, but most likely a government project to implement farming techniques in arrid wast lands such as Sub-Saharan Africa, Gobi, and various US deserts.

Isn't there US government project going on to develop genemodified fruits and vegetables which would grow in few days/week instead of many weeks for military?
This might well be (part of) it... I'm sure they want to make those plants such that they grow also in lower nutrient dirt and for this that area would be quite good.