BIOLOGISTS DIG DEEPER

BIOLOGISTS DIG DEEPER Frontlines SCIENCEBUSINESSNATURETECHNOLOGYCULTUREPOLITICS I EARTHY SECRETS Now night BA battens b. &Wetted by global warming') Canada's new Biotron superlab contains miniature chunks of the natural world that will help us predict the impact of climate change on living organisms BY LINDSAY BORTHWICK GROUP OF PLANT SCIENTISTS GATHERED IN VIENNA IN 2005 AT THE httenvitional Botanical Congress. The meetingwaspretty much whatyou would expect until its conclusion, when the congress declared: "As a matter of urgency, facilities for controlled, ecosystem-scale experiments are required now." Walt- out a better toolbox to study how the natural world responds to global climate change. "sustained human habitability of Earth" would be at risk. Fortunately, just such ii toolbox was already being designed by Norman Winer, a Canadian biochemist and plant biologist. Honer had begun work or. his Biotron Institute for Experimental Climate Change Research in 1999 In early 2008 it wit open its doors, the first facility in the Peace in The Garden Annual per capita water consumption in the United States: 660,430 gallons. In China• 184,920 gallons WINTER 2008 UST FALL IN THE GERMAN city of Kassel, a group of about 15 women harvested a bumper crop of pumpkins, squash, and wine grapes from a small community gar- den. Nothing unusual there. perhaps—except that the women were from Morocco. Afghanistan, Somalia. arid the former Yugoslavia. The -intercultural garden" in Kassel is one of about 100 in Germany, but the only one run entirety by women. lAnd alter the gardeners had long discussions about the haz- ards of pesticides, its produce will be totally organic.) The gardens began in 1995, after a group of Bosnian women in Gottingen, waiting out the Balkan conflict, told social workers how much they missed the famous plum and apple orchards of Bosnia's Drina Valley. There has been adversity along the way. A garden in Berlin had to be placed under police protection alter it was targeted by neo-Nazi protest- ers In Cologne the gates of another garden have been destroyed three times. And it isn't always easy to coax tra- ditional crops such as Afghan mint. coriander, and Iranian leeks from the mineral-rich German soil. Yet the gardens thrive. Says Behoumi, a 31-year-old from Morocco, 'Without the beauty of the garden I could not survive.' —ANOELA BOSKOVICH WINTER 2002 unearth 13 EFTA00601918 RONTLINES world that will allow researchers to recreate and study how a com- plete ecosystem, such as Arctic tundra or boreal forest, responds to climate change. The Biotron, Hither says. is 'as close as you can get to nature lin a labl." The Biotron will help integrate biology into the scientific study of global warming. Existing climate change models, says Miner, are more about physics than biology; moreover, they descriie changes that are happening to the planet rather than to particular habitats, specks, or individuals. Scientists haven't been able to create pre- dictive models, for example, of how changes in rainfall and researchers tested in two sepa- rate 'missions whether humans could live sustainably in a sealed. self-contained environment as a precursor to colonizing outer space. The Biotron, scientifically speaking, is in a different league. The superlaboratory is a joint project of the University of Western Ontario, the University of Guelph, Ontario, and Agricul- ture and Agri-Food Canada, a federal agency. The nondescript five-story building, located in the agricultural heartland of south- western Ontario, is 211 engineer- ing marvel, yet a bargain at just U.S $2S maim Inside are state-of-thean fa. Waits that support research into microorganisms, insects, and plants, all of which can be geneti- cally modified to suit research- en' needs. Temperature in the Researchers will vie for access to the Biotron much as physicists compete to use the world's few particle accelerators or astronomers the latest and biggest optical telescopes temperature will affect soybean yields in the U.S. grain belt or butterflies in the Amazon basin, because, with a few exceptions, they haven't had the tools to measure the impact of climate change on living organisms Now there's a place where whole ecosystans can be scrupu- lously recreated and organisms scrutinized, from their DNA to their interaction with other organ- isms. With more complete data. scientists will be able to make better predictions—and their ex. perimennl findings could better inform policy makers, who might for example, provide subsidies for crops that respond well to emerg- ing climate patterns. The Biotron may call to mind Biosphere 2. the large artificial habitat plopped down 20 years ago in the Arizona desert. where Biotron's climate chambers can be varied from -40 degrees Fahr- enheit to 122 dtprCS, to simulate anything boat the Arctic winter to a tropical rainforest On the maid the buidiag siebioniesa—air- locksd. greathousehice stuchres that have been custom designed to precisely control environmental factors such as temperature, UV radiation, light intensity. wait pre- cipitation, and COs. Each biome is large enough to house trees nay than 30 feet tall and to allow for the recreation of complex biologi- cal communities that can extend from the highest tree canopies to underground soil layers. If the possibilities seem end- less, they nearly are. The plan is for the worlesleadilg scientists to rotate in and out of the lab space, and the biomes will be regularly reconfigured. One such setup will use aces sectionsolAnxic penna- frost transported from northern Canada, so researchers can study how it reacts to rising tempera- tures: As the permafrost thaws, how much methane gas will be released? How will bacteria and overwintering insects be affected by changing freeze-thaw cycles? Scientists will design and study more temperate ecosystems, as well, to learn how changes in temperature and CO, affect the growth of photosynthetic organisms, including crops and boreal forest. &CODY' researches MI] also be able to study the benefits and risks of biotechnology in agriculture, forestry, and medicine by examin- ing the basic biology of geneticaly modified organisms What is the rate of gene transfer from trans- genic plants to wild ones? Can plants be to manufac- ture medicinal compounds that will benefit humans? The Biotron will be equipped with a sophisticated imaging and analysis system—avirtual control room—that ail expand its reach globally, allowing researchers anywhere to manage and moni- tor experiments remotely over the Internet in real time. A scien- tist in India studying the impact of climate change on rice could instruct the Biotron to raise the temperature or COI concentra- tion in a biome set up to simulate a South Asian rice paddy.Then he or she could monitor the impact of this change through images and other data autocratically col- lected and stored in a supercom puling network. Remembers will vie for access to the Biotron in much the same way that physicists compete to use the world's few particle aced- erators or astronomers the latest and biggest optical telescopes. like them. it is a place for frontier science. where old models aJ fal and new and unexpected ones will arise —except that the goal is not to understand our cosmic origins but to influence our destiny. Through personal care products, the average American child is exposed to 27 chemicals daily that have not been proven safe Nihon/ Far From Nirvana NEW YORKCITYSANITABHA Buddhists are full of good intentions. Last stammer members of the group bought hundreds of eels, frogs, and turtles from the citys China- town markets and released them into New Jersey's Pas- saic River to save them from the dinner table. The problem: the states Department of Environmental Protection has strict rules for the release of animals into its watersheds. and the group now faces fines for illegally introducing iriVa- sive species. To make matters worse, the animals may not survive. —ADAM SPANGLER They Didn't Mean That GE OUR FALL 2007650E. Howard Frumkin of the Centers for Disease Control warned that global warming was "perhaps the largest looming public health chal- lenge that we face.' On October 23, Prumkirls boss. CDC director Julie Gerberding, testified about climate change to the Sen- ate Environment and Public Works Committee. By the time Bush administration officials were done review- ing her 12-page draft, it had been stashed to six. Among the statements cut: -The COC considers climate change a serious public concern. S 8 a j et 88 I ll p K ;,“1 •3=tuw,,,4, 7kivrimaysir”sweammzetsn"...misx „x.; 14 onearth WINTER 2008 . EFTA00601919