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SCIENCEBUSINESSNATURETECHNOLOGYCULTUREPOUTICS
EARTHS SECRETS
Now might soil
bacteria be affected
by global warming',
BIOLOGISTS DIG DEEPER
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 BORTH WICK
GROUP OF PLANT SCIENTISTS GATHERED IN VIENNA IN 2005 AT THE
International Botanical Congress. The meeting was pretty much what you would
expect until its conclusion, when the congress declared: "As a matter of urgency,
facilities for controlled, ecosystem-scale experiments are required now." With-
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 a toolbox was already being designed by Norman
Winer, a Canadian biochemist and plant biologist. Htiner had begun work on his Biotron Institute for
Experimental Climate Change Research in 1999. In early 2008 it will open its doors, the first facility in the
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per capita water consumption in the United States: 660,430 gallons. In China: 184,920 gallons
WINTER 2008
Peace in
The Garden
LAST 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, and
the former Yugoslavia.
The "intercultural garden"
in Kassel is one of about 100
in Germany, but the only one
run entirely by women. (And
after the gardeners had long
discussions about the haz-
ards of pesticides, its produce
will be totally organic.) The
gardens began in 1495, 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 after 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."
—ANGELA BOSKOVICH
WINTER 2008 onearth 13
FRONTLINES
world that will allow researchers
to re-create and study how a com-
plete ecosystem, such as Arctic
tundra or boreal forest, responds
to climate change. The Biotron,
Hiiner says, is "as close as you
can get to nature [in a lab]."
The Biotron will help integrate
biology into the scientific study of
global warming. Existing climate
change models, says Hillier, are
more about physics than biology;
moreover, they describe changes
that are happening to the planet
rather than to particular habitats,
species, 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 an engineer-
ing marvel, yet a bargain at just
U.S. $28 million.
Inside are state-of-the-art fa-
cilities that support research into
microorganisms, insects, and
plants, all of which can be geneti-
cally modified to suit research-
ers' 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 ecosystems can be scrupu-
lously re-created 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 (heir ex-
perimental 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 degrees, to simulate
anything from the Arctic winter to
a tropical rainforest On the roof of
the building are six "biomes"—air-
locked, greenhouse-like structures
that have been custom designed
to precisely control environmental
factors such as temperature, UV
radiation, light intensity, wind, pre-
cipitation, and CO2. Each biome is
large enough to house bees more
than 30 feet tall and to allow for
there-creation 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 world's leading scientists to
rotate in and out of the lab space,
and the biomes will be regularly
reconfigured. One such setup will
use cross sections of Arctic perma-
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 CO2 affect
the growth of photosynthetic
organisms, including crops and
boreal forest,
Biotron researchers will also be
able to study the benefits and risks
of biotechnology in agriculture,
forestry, and medicine by examin-
ing the basic biology of genetically
modified organisms: What is the
rate of gene transfer from trans-
genic plants to wild ones? Can
plants be engineered to manufac-
ture medicinal compounds that
will benefit humans?
The Biotron will be equipped
with a sophisticated imaging and
analysis system—a virtual control
room—that will expand its reach
globally, allowing researchers
anywhere to manage and moni-
tor experiments remotely over
the Internet in real time. A scien.-
fist in India studying the impact
of climate change on rice could
instruct the Biotron to raise the
temperature or CO2 concentra-
tion in a biome set up to simulate
a SouthAsian rice paddy. Then he
or she could monitor the impact
of this change through images
and other data automatically col-
lected and stored in a supercom-
puling network
Researchers will vie for access
to the Biotron in much the same
way that physicists compete to
use the world's few particle accel-
erators or astronomers the latest
and biggest optical telescopes.
like them, itis a. place for frontier
science, where old models will fall
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
Far From
Nirvana
NEW YORK CITY'S AMITABHA
Buddhists are full of good
intentions. Last summer
members of the group bought
hundreds of eeLs, frogs, anti
turtles from the city's China-
town markets and released
them into New Jersey's Pas-
saic River to save them from
the dinner table. The problem:
the state's Department of
Environmental Protection has
strict rules for the release of
animals into its watersheds,
and the group now faces fines
for illegally introducing inva-
sive species. To make matters
worse, the animals may not
survive, —ADAM SPANGLER
They Didn't
Mean That
IN OUR FALL 2007 ISSUE,
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, Frumkin's
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 slashed to six. Among
the statements cut: "The COC
considerS climate change a
serious public concern.'
WORKING GROUP
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14 onearth WINTER 2008