"World Enough, and Time:" A Global Investment for
the Environment
Dr. Rita R. Colwell
Director
National Science Foundation
Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Biological
Sciences
Arlington, Virginia
March 24, 2001
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Good morning everyone and thank you, Gene, for the
kind introduction. I'd also like to thank Greg Anderson,
Alan Covich, and Richard O'Grady for extending the
invitation.
It seems we need a bigger room each time we meet. The
number of member organizations in AIBS has roughly
doubled in the same length of time that I've been
NSF Director.
I doubt these figures have anything to do with each
other, but it is extremely gratifying none-the-less.
As the first plenary speaker, it's also gratifying
to officially welcome you to Washington.
We like to refer to Washington as "the land of the
VIPs". . . or the very important pandas. As you may
know, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian are beginning their
first spring season here at the National Zoo.
When pondering the theme of this year's meeting, "From
Biodiversity to Biocomplexity," I couldn't help but
think of our new pandas-and the national media coverage
they command.
We repeatedly hear about these cuddly cubs in the headlines.
We're fortunate that they keep the issue of biodiversity
in the public spotlight.
But unfortunately, they are also a reminder of the
work we have to do on this front, and in an even larger
arena.
[Title slide: Earth
from space]
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This underscores the title of my talk today-"World
enough, and Time." I borrowed it from a rather unlikely
source. It comes from a poem by the 17th century English
poet, Andrew Marvell.
Marvell used this theme to convince a young woman that
they should "live for today." He argues that they
did not have enough time to play "coy" games.
In contemporary times, we can easily apply the theme
"World enough, and Time" to our quest to understand
our Earth's biosphere.
The clock is ticking for a host of environmental issues.
We've all heard the list: deforestation, ecosystem
health, global climate change, loss of biodiversity,
and so on.
These are specific global challenges that require researchers
to take a broad, systematic--even a holistic--view.
[Biocomplexity slide
with two arrows]
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For the first time, we stand at the very threshold
of a new and deeper understanding of our planet. It's
a dynamic web of often surprising interrelationships
between living things at all levels.
Biocomplexity sums it up nicely. Many of you may have
heard me address this previously, and I'd like to
bring you up-to-date in our thinking.
Biocomplexity is expanding our vision from the molecular
to the global, and it's given us a viable multi-disciplinary
approach to environmental research.
Traditionally, scientists in all fields have taken
the reductionist approach. We've looked at disconnected
or individual pieces of systems, like the manipulation
of a single variable in a community or the behavior
of one weed in one cropping system.
This approach has given us the lion's share of scientific
knowledge to date and provides us with the intellectual
platform to address the interplay between parts of
complex systems.
It draws upon science and engineering, and the latest
technologies as well.
We now have the tools and infrastructure to observe
the earth's systems across dimensions.
Developments in genomics, information technology, and
nanotechnology allow us to tackle the intricacies
of interactions among biological, ecological, physical,
and earth systems.
This brings us to a new era of environmental research
and policy based on predictive understanding that
also includes human activities.
This morning, I would like to take us on a virtual
tour across different levels of organization. We can
glimpse linkages between biocomplexity and biodiversity,
other disciplines, and new tools.
Step one of this tour is exploring complexity itself.
The science of complexity has its foundations in systems
theory and chaos theory, but delves deeper into the
underlying order of our universe.
To quote from an article on complexity that ran in
the journal Science last year, "very simple ingredients
can produce very beautiful, rich and patterned outputs."
[three spirals]
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We study complexity because it gives us a perspective
spanning many disciplines and scales. Here's an example
that looks across space: literally.
These three spirals connect on grand scales--beginning
with the hurricane on the left and moving to the spiral
galaxy in the middle.
Even gravitational waves--the blue circles on the right--ripple
across this cosmic vision. The blue circles are an
artist's depiction of two black holes orbiting each
other.
From this common spiral pattern, we gain a richer perspective
of the uniformity that can be charted across space
and time.
[metabolic rate graph]
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Metabolic rates offer another example. Obvious orders,
or scales of size, emerge from this comprehensive
view.
The rate follows a hierarchy-from mammals on the upper
right to ever-smaller entities down through a cell,
a mitochondrion, and a respiratory complex.
We see a suggestion, perhaps, of a universal principle
underlying life at all scales.
[Japanese atoms]
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Now, let's embark on a virtual tour across the hierarchy
of scales we find in nature. We'll start at the atomic
level and move to systems covering the entire planet.
This journey, with discoveries at every step, reflects
the breadth of NSF's mission.
Let's start on the smallest end of the scale, at the
atom--or the Lilliputian level of the nanoscale.
Here we see the word "atom" literally written out in
Japanese with atoms. Each character is just a few
nanometers across. One nanometer--one billionth of
a meter--is a magical point on the dimensional scale.
[fly's eye and nano-needles]
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At this scale the biological and the physical worlds
meet. I've symbolized this with a pair of images that
take us from in vivo to in silico.
On the left are the tiny structures of the eye of a
fly. On the right are artificial structures: micromachined
needles with sharp tips of less than a micrometer
across, developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
These needles are a novel new method of painless drug
delivery.
Micro-electrical mechanical systems now approach this
same scale. We are now at the point of connecting
individual sensors to particles of dust.
[pollen on bee's leg
and microscopic shot of nanodust]
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We call this "smart dust." It's a beautiful example
of how nanotechnology is being used to understand
the Earth's biodiversity.
Jeff Brinker and colleagues with undergraduate students
at the University of New Mexico and Sandia National
Labs are developing microscopic nanosensors that are
carried like ordinary pollen on a bee's body. This
research is part of NSF's Research Experience for
Undergraduates portfolio.
[bees on dust and
sensor]
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Now for the action. On the left, you see a bee collecting
the "smart dust" at a sugar water station. After buzzing
by the dust, this bee is "nanosensored," to coin a
term.
The bee carries these nanosensors, which range from
30 to 300 nm in diameter, throughout its normal daily
activities. When it returns to the hive, which we
see on the right, the sensor plate assimilates the
data from these nanosensors.
We now have insight into the bee's itinerary: where
it traveled and which environmental contaminants it
has contacted. Currently, the researchers are charging
these particles to search for TNT, an explosive that
indicates the presence of land mines in an area.
["Deep Green:" You
are here]
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Let's now venture to the molecular level and reorient
ourselves on the tree of life. Some of our new molecular
mapping tools have set off revolutions.
This is the case of "Deep Green." What began as modest
support from NSF to a group of scientists has revolutionized
the way we view relationships between lifeforms.
This work has given us new insights into the upper
reaches of the earth's 3.5-billion-old-tree of life.
DNA sequencing shows that plants, animals, and fungi
now cluster together at the top of the tree.
Tracing the family tree will bear fruit in plant breeding,
drug development, and many environmental challenges.
It's that proverbial library that enables much of genetic
engineering-making possible the advances we read about
each day.
[globe of microorganisms]
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Let's continue up the scale to the level of microorganisms-our
microbial world, the planet Earth. We have learned
that microorganisms are the oldest, most diverse,
and most abundant form of life on our planet.
They have been evolving a thousand times longer than
all of human history. NSF has set up new microbial
observatories to study this astonishing diversity.
[Science cover with
acid mine tailings]
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Science magazine featured this newly discovered
bacterium. It lives in highly acidic and corrosive
drainage from an iron mine. In fact, the organism
contributes to the drainage.
Isolated by Katrina Edwards of the University of Wisconsin
and colleagues, the bacterium forms biofilms--streams
of slime.
It may ultimately be useful in dealing with acid mine
drainage that causes millions of dollars of environmental
damage every year around the globe.
[oldest bacteria]
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Here we see the oldest living organism found to date,
a previously unrecognized spore-forming bacterium.
This 250 million-year-old bacterium was found entombed
in salt crystals 850 ft deep in a Permian Salado Formation
in New Mexico.
Needless to say, most folks would never imagine life
to survive in pure salt-though it's no surprise to
us microbial ecologists.
This raises some issues we need to think about.
As the broader scientific community continues to look
for life in these extreme environments, our need for
a systematic data collection and to interconnect these
databases will continue to grow.
Current data about biodiversity are scattered in many
local databases, or reside on paper not amenable to
interactive searching.
It is estimated that over 3 billion specimens are catalogued
in natural history collections around the world.
Linking current collections will provide a global,
historical perspective to study patterns of global
species distribution on a larger scale.
A steering committee has been established to form a
Global Biodiversity Information Facility. NSF's Jim
Edwards has chaired part of this effort. Jim's deputy
assistant director of the Biological Sciences Directorate.
This speaks to the sustainable use and management of
biodiversity, which will require that information
be available when and where it is needed by decision
makers and scientists alike.
First, this facility will catalog all of the world's
species by scientific names, and then develop both
a digital library of biodiversity knowledge and a
compilation of facts about each individual species.
This information will be available to anyone with access
to the Web.
[bacteria in petri
dishes]
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The biological exploration of the earth has resulted
in enormous collections of all forms of life. A familiar
example is the American Type Culture Collection. It
receives NSF funding and catalogues more than 17,000
bacterial strains.
The first culture dates from 75 years ago. I served
on the Board of Trustees for 20 years and, therefore,
am very familiar with its value to microbiology.
We know that US collections are held by more than 150
museums, botanical gardens, and research institutions.
Specimens and their associated data document the biodiversity
of our planet.
We are now drawing on these data to predict how populations
of organisms respond to catastrophic events or urban
sprawl, for example.
And we now know that responses are not always linear.
[flour beetle graphs]
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An example is a population of flour beetles, the first
demonstration of chaos in a biological population.
The flour beetle, or Tribolium, is an age-old pest.
It first turned up in the granaries of ancient Egypt.
Its population dynamics in the laboratory demonstrate
that disturbing a non-linear system can produce unexpected
effects.
Here, for example, one would expect that higher mortality
would produce fewer larvae-but the opposite is true.
On the right, in red, we see wild, chaotic oscillations
of high and low numbers.
This is from the work of J. M. Cushing at the University
of Arizona and colleagues. As Cushing says, "The ACME
Pest Control Company, instead of controlling an infestation,
could create severe and unpredictable pest outbreaks!"
These results have lessons for managing biological
populations, such as fish at hatcheries.
[Invasive species:
Asian long-horned beetle]
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The spread of invasive species underscores the need
to understand complex behaviors in populations. The
white circles that we see here are actual infestations
of Asian long-horned beetles, which are literally
eating their way through our nation's trees. With
data from 40 environments in China-where the Asian
Long-horned beetle naturally occurs-NSF-funded researchers
from The Biodiversity Research Center at Univ. of
Kansas have predicted the potential spread of this
insect throughout the United States.
The gold stars identify the most likely ports of entry.
The areas in red are the most suitable habitats for
infestations, while the areas in white are the least
likely to support this newly introduced pest. This
modeling translates into policy as USDA's quarantine
efforts are now concentrated in these locations.
[Dolphin fins]
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We are not only tracking unwanted invaders, new tools
are allowing us, for the first time, to correlate
population survival with habitat change.
In Florida, researchers at Eckard College have created
an NSF-funded digital library with images of individual
bottlenose dolphins that live in Boca Ciega Bay. Individual
dolphins are identified by notches and scars on their
dorsal fins.
Researchers are monitoring annual changes in dolphin
populations with habitat change. When Florida banned
commercial netting in the state's in-shore waters,
researchers were able to track an increase of about
30% in the dolphin population in one year.
New, cheap, nanosensors hooked to networks will ultimately
let us take the pulse of desired species in ecosystems
in real time.
We are to the point of giving to individual frogs in
lakes their own chips. This "wireless technology"
sends a signal of their whereabouts to their own URLs.
Who knew that frogs would have their own WebPages?
[Virtual Chesapeake
Bay]
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Large computer networks will allow researchers to share
massive amounts of environmental data in real-time.
For example, researchers from around the country are
exploring a virtual bay in 3-D together, as avatars.
Prediction, as well as collaboration, are hallmarks
of this three-dimensional simulation of the Chesapeake
Bay developed at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications.
One possible application for this capability was just
front page news in the Washington Post. Rockfish-pushed
to the edge in the 1980s--have returned to historical
numbers. And they're rapacious eaters.
They're gobbling up the blue crabs in the bay. We don't
know the total impact but the estimate is that rockfish
are eating more the 73 million young crabs a year.
In just a few days, one fish can consume over one
hundred small crabs.
This provides a general lesson for biodiversity. Reestablishing
balance in some systems may be difficult, if not impossible.
With virtual ecosystems, we can imagine one day assessing
the entire environment of our planet, and being able
to make solid choices for sustainability based on
knowledge gained from biocomplexity research.
[George Bank]
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This type of approach can be used to preserve biodiversity
in large scale ecosystems.
The Georges Bank in the Atlantic Ocean has been called
"the breadbasket" of fishing for New England for a
century-and-a-half. By the early 1990s its fisheries
were almost depleted.
In the case of the George's Bank, the perspective of
biocomplexity can link basic study of ocean ecology
with fisheries management.
A major study--GLOBEC, Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics--traced
how complex ocean physics interact with ecological
relationships. NSF funded GLOBEC to model how global
change might affect marine resources.
[closeup of scallops]
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
has taken the model results and applied them directly
to manage scallop harvesting on the Georges Bank.
The models can predict where the regions that are good
sources of scallop larvae are--areas that should
not be harvested.
One region that had been made safe from harvesting
was reopened recently. That new harvest netted $30
million for the New Bedford, Massachusetts community
alone. Who says economics doesn't mix with the environment?
[Florida water/deer
modeling]
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At the regional scale, another good example of biocomplexity
in practice: to restore the Florida Everglades, it
is essential to understand how different hydrologic
schemes will affect key species of animals.
Researchers with support from NSF and the U.S. Geological
Survey have been developing models that allow tracking
of individual animals--notably the panther and deer
populations of Florida.
We see a map of water flow on the left--with wetter
areas depicted in red. On the right is vegetation,
with the bluest areas denoting flooding and less vegetation--and,
therefore, poor habitat for deer.
Various plans for water release can be modeled to detect
the effect on different animal populations, especially
the highly endangered Florida panther.
We now have the computing capacity to analyze data
sets we have been accumulating for years and to predict
environmental consequences.
[bleached coral]
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Turning to the disturbing phenomenon of coral bleaching-which
is expanding rapidly on a global scale-we have another
environmental challenge that is ripe for the biocomplexity
approach.
Here we see a diseased star coral, one of the prime
reef-building corals of the tropical Atlantic.
Coral reefs have value in fisheries, tourism, and protecting
coastlines, to mention just a few.
But bleaching-the deterioration of symbiosis between
corals and their micro-algal symbionts-has been growing,
even in some of the most remote and pristine reefs.
A major culprit appears to be the global rise in sea
surface temperature.
Bleaching is under scrutiny across the scales-from
the level of the cell to the population to the history
of reefs and climate on our planet.
We've found, for instance, that this star coral is
not a single species but a complex of closely related
ones.
We've also learned that the microscopic algae that
live symbiotically with the coral are also from different
strains. Mapping this diversity will help us know
if coral will repopulate after severe bleaching, or
if we can expect dramatic losses.
[LTER map]
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On a continental scale and beyond, NSF's Long-term
Ecological Research Network, now in its 22nd year,
supports scientists and students studying ecological
processes over long periods and across broad scales.
The 24 sites, including two in Antarctica, target diverse
ecosystems.
[Baltimore LTER]
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The Baltimore, Maryland LTER site, for example, focuses
on what has been called "ecology's last frontier:"
the urban ecosystem.
The studies include social and economic factors. One
of the participating ecologists is Grace Brush of
Johns Hopkins University.
She says, "For ecologists this is really a new thing.
Humans were to be avoided. For me at least, it has
changed my thinking-to look at humans as part of the
natural system."
[El Niño]
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Our ability to predict El Niņo-the irregular cycle
of shifts in ocean and atmospheric conditions-is a
superb example of our progress on the global scale.
In the early 20th century, British mathematician
Sir Gilbert Walker first noted the link between atmospheric
pressure in the eastern South Pacific and the Indian
Ocean-and the monsoon rains in India.
It took leading-edge computers to process the reams
of data, not to mention new mathematical techniques
to analyze the data, in order for us to predict the
onset of El Niņo.
[pinon-juniper ecosystem]
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Now, to one last stop on our tour, to a pinon-juniper
ecosystem near Sunset Crater, Arizona.
A long-term ecological study began when Tom Whitham
and his colleagues at Northern Arizona University
took students on a field trip to this desert environment.
Some inquisitive students asked the profound question,
"Why do some trees look so funny?"
This question is now a large-scale interdisciplinary
research program spanning all scales of biocomplexity,
from the molecular to a global model for climate change
studies.
[cropped tree]
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Some pinon pines in this system resemble bonsai because
massive outbreaks of moths attack stem tips and "prune"
the trees.
The consequences of this pruning are more profound
than altered plant architecture. These pruned pinons
don't set seed. (Try saying that three times fast.)
Birds and small mammals depend on the pinons as a food
source, and hence, biodiversity crashes. Native Americans,
who sell the pinon nuts, are also deprived of a source
of income.
So why are some trees attacked by these insects and
some not? Functional genomics has revealed that the
trees with low insect populations carry genes for
stress resistance.
These resistant trees produce more resin to ward off
insects and are better adapted to the low water and
nutrient content of this cinder field.
Resistant and susceptible trees also have different
species and numbers of bacterial symbionts and associated
mycorrhizal fungi.
The populations found in association with the resistant
trees serve to buffer them further from environmental
stresses common in this hot, dry climate.
[ecosystem schematic]
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Integrating these diverse disciplines has revealed
a gene-to-ecosystem link that is serving as a quantitative
model to predict species adaptation with global warming.
These fascinating interactions start at the molecular
level, quickly assimilate to differences in the microorganism
populations, and then move up the scale to community
and ecosystem.
This is the "biocomplexity" of life, that will continue
to provide insight into biodiversity.
The noted biologist and author, E. O. Wilson, refers
to biodiversity as the "very stuff of life."
He is right. Biodiversity is the variety of all living
things on Earth, which includes the millions of people.
But biodiversity is much more than the vast variety
of species. It includes the genes that every individual
inherits from his or her parents and passes to the
next generation.
We have seen examples where biocomplexity includes
studies of this type, like "Deep Green." With the
human and Arabidopsis genome now complete,
we are only beginning to incorporate this knowledge
into our web of life.
Biodiversity also encompasses individuals. I showed
you dolphins from the digital library. We then moved
to the scale of populations, like the chaotic flour
beetles and Georges bank' scallops.
Biocomplexity then crossed ecosystems with a look at
our coral reefs in crisis. And lastly we have seen
the interaction of species with in their physical
environment, the insect-pruned pinon trees.
[Robert Frost]
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Research in our environmental portfolio reminds us
that we are all connected, and some of the strongest
connections must be with education.
That's the best part, because virtually all of the
projects I cited involve students of all levels, from
grade school to grad school to elder hostel.
That's something all of us can incorporate into our
work, and I know many of you are providing leadership
in this area.
I will close now as I opened, with the words of a poet-a
quotation from Robert Frost. "Nature is always hinting
at us," he wrote. "It hints over and over again. And
suddenly we take the hint."
Now we've taken nature's hint. Our world is fundamentally
not linear at all. The whole is usually much more
than the sum of the parts. The web of connections
is our cartography for a sustainable future.
Thank you. And, once again, on behalf of the pandas
and other VIPs, welcome to Washington.
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