The Advent of Big Biology

Among the odder jobs in the U.S. these days is one held by a man in northern Colorado who spends hours following a pronghorn antelope, watching it feed, and then whispering into a tape recorder. Absurd? Hardly. By such surveillance, ecologists are learning the animal's precise relationship to its environment--the grasslands of the American West. In time, the habits of the antelope and countless other creatures will be stored in the data banks of computers. Scientists will then be able to ask a computer what really happens when man changes the grasslands environment by farming, building roads or just being there.

The grasslands study fits into a larger framework: the International Biological Program. Organized by the International Council of Scientific Unions in 1964, I.B.P. involves 57 nations, most of which are concentrating on such problems as how to increase food production or control population. The U.S. has even bigger ambitions: 2,000 scientists are developing an entirely new approach to studying ecological problems, including human adaptability to different environments.

It is a stupendous task. Natural systems are scientific nightmares of complexity, redundancy and loose organization. To cope with those systems requires what I.B.P. scientists call "big biology"--the reinforcement of biology by a dozen disciplines, including meteorology, physics and geology. Because most specialists have traditionally worked alone, W. Frank Blair, chairman of the U.S. effort in I.B.P., held a series of five-day workshops at which the scientists learned to talk to one another. "It was difficult for them to get over their individual hang-ups, their insecurities, and to expose their ignorance in fields related to their own," he says. "But they did."

I.B.P. has benefited from the new public concern over deterioration of the environment. And Congress, led by Connecticut's Representative Emilio Daddario and Maine's Senator Edmund Muskie, has been generous. At a time when funds for most other scientific-research projects have been slashed, I.B.P. has been getting more and more money: $500,000 in fiscal 1969, $4,000,000 in 1970, and $7,000,000 next year.

The biggest U.S. project is the $1,800,000 grasslands study, which has 80 scientists working in 400 counties between the Mississippi and the Rockies. Besides trailing antelopes, they are studying such seeming minutiae as the relationship between cows and lark buntings. The little birds nest on the range in saltbush, a plant that cows find delectable. As the supply of saltbush is eaten, the lark bunting population declines. Without the birds to eat grasshoppers, the insects begin to proliferate and compete with cows for grass. In the end, the cows' survival is at stake. With basic information about the entire grasslands ecosystem, the problem may become manageable.

Among other U.S. programs:

>Indian study is based on the theory that primitive people tend to get along well with their environment, while "civilized" people do so less well. Supplemented by field work in Brazil, the study aims to learn the lessons that Indians can teach urban Americans.

>Tundra study concentrates on what modern man can do to preserve the especially fragile arctic environment around Alaska's oil-rich North Slope.

> Tropical forest study involves the South American rain forest--one of the earth's principal suppliers of oxygen. "Ecologically unwise use of the huge Amazon forest could have environmental repercussions with global effects," says Blair. "Yet we know less about this forest than about any other ecosystem."

> High-altitude study focuses on how people can live above 10,000 ft. Reason: as population increases in countries like India, more people will probably have to move to the rarified atmosphere of high-mountain areas. Carried on largely in the Andes and Rockies, the study will suggest how best to prepare for the move.

Spider's Warning. In the future, Blair, together with his Swedish and Russian counterparts, hopes to develop a global warning system to detect pollution. Before their plan is presented at the U.N. World Conference on Environment in 1972, Blair plans to test a prototype station. The system's scope will appear only as a vast number of small details are analyzed. The ability of a spider to spin a web, for example, can be affected by air pollution; mosses, which accumulate lead from the environment, are a good measure of lead pollution. In effect, the system will be analogous to the old practice of placing canaries in coal mines to warn miners of impending lethal concentrations of gas.

So far I.B.P. is illustrating the complexity of the environment and proving how one part invariably affects others. Even so, the final goal of accurately predicting the result of any specific action is still far in the future. As Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch said when he threw his support behind the program: "Comparatively speaking, the moon shot was easy."

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