The Solar System

Studies of THE SOLAR SYSTEM include the near-space neighbors of the earth--the moon, planets, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids--as well as the sun itself and its relationship to other members of this complex system. SAO'S research program incorporates theoretical, laboratory, and observational studies of extraterrestrial bodies, their history since the formation of the solar system, and the sea of radiation to which they have been exposed.

Energetic Phenomena

ENERGETIC PHENOMENA studies are concerned with the sources of radiation, including the nature of newly discovered and largely unexplained sources of radiation far outside the solar system. For many scientists, these new astronomical sources present some of the most intellectually challenging problems in science today. More energy is being emitted from the centers of galaxies and from quasars than can be explained by any processes now understood. Most likely, the answers to these newest mysteries will be provided by the newest astronomical tools--radio, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma-ray, and advanced optical instrumentation.

Object Class

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION--"Salaries and Expenses," Fiscal Year 1972 SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Support to Professional Research Efforts (3 positions, $34,000)

The environmental research programs have suffered because of a lack of back-up support activity. The greatest shortages are two field aids and a launch operator ($17,000) and additional direct support for the scientific operations ($17,000).

Support to Facilities Operations (5 positions, $64,000)

A large portion of the Institute's annual budget is used to keep the facilities in reasonably good shape; this is a difficult task because of the tropical climate, the growing use of facilities, and condition of some buildings and equipment. A manager and a janitor are needed for the marine station's facilities, a maintenance laborer for Barro Colorado Island, and an electrician and a messenger for all facilities ($25, 000). Additional funding for facilities maintenance and equipment is also requested ($39,000).

Environment and Behavior Research (2 positions, $44,000)

A marine ecologist and a forest ecologist are needed to allow a measured step of progress in the research program ($33, 000). Direct support funding is requested for laboratory and office needs, travel and household transportation, and supplies ($11,000).

Administrative Support and Interagency Research (2 positions, $34,000)

With the growing utilization of STRI's facilities, administrative support is urgently needed; one office administrator and one technical typist are requested ($21,000), along with support funding for central administrative functions ($13,000).

Established 25 years ago to foster understanding of the tropical environment as preserved on Barro Colorado Island, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has become a center of excellence for advanced studies by staff, advanced students, associates, and visiting scientists on the processes of survival and their relationship to the environment--ever more essential questions for which the tropics are uniquely suited. In the tropics, diversities are greater, competitive processes and interactions more complex, new lines of adaptive radiation more pronounced, and year-round field study and experimental opportunities richer by far than in other climes.

Panama, easily accessible, offers an array of terrestrial and marine study habitats within immediate reach. The Isthmus is a land bridge for the biotic interchange of two continents and, at the same time, a continuing barrier to the biota of two oceans--separated by several millions of years, but only 50 miles apart. This affords an observational and experimental potential which cannot be matched elsewhere. The interdependence of ocean and continent is beginning to be publically recognized. STRI has one of the few teams of scientists in the world organized jointly to pursue the biology of both realms.

Questions on survival, importance of diversity, the critical role of communications, mapping and influence of environmental change, invasions by new populations, partitioning of environmental resources on land and in the oceans-on these and many other fronts STRI progress is recognized by leaders in biology from around the world. Last year, ten STRI staff biologists gave 25 seminars at leading universities and prepared 53 contributions in research for publication. More than 100 other contributions were made by visiting scientists based on work at STRI.

The great growth in visitor demand from across the United States is testimony to the key value of STRI's role. In the last twelve months alone, 624 men and women from sixty-two universities and 33 agencies and institutions in 28 states and 22 countries spent 8, 757 work days mining the combined intellectual and environmental resources at STRI. STRI harbors five laboratories for studying tropical marine and terrestrial ecology from forest and lake to seashore and mountain. Work is underway in forty different habitats on interactions between hundreds of different organisms and their environment. STRI provides a base of operations for pursuing fundamental questions in biology and for understanding the tropics--habitat for one-half of mankind. Concurrently, comparative studies elsewhere in the New and Old World tropics are magnifying the value of efforts at any one locale.

Other recent sources of testimony include the following comments by a prominent scientist and past president of the National Academy of Sciences:

"It is terribly impressive to me and most encouraging that in
recent years STRI has expanded into such a first rate and significant
institution. Most of the scientists whom I met and talked to at some
length are from good to excellent. The program of bringing young
people in for substantial working periods is really justifying itself
according to my first-hand impressions. The whole organization is
gaining immensely from the effect of having a critical mass with
genuine group interaction and intellectual intercourse on a high
plane.

"In addition to my congratulations on the existence of such a scientifically significant group as that represented by your staff and invited fellows, I must also speak to the value and importance for the total biological community of the excellent facilities you maintain for transient visitors like ourselves."

An increase of $176, 000 is requested to provide a balanced program of research and research support, facilities management, and administration adequate to keep pace with the accelerating demands on the activity. An additional $60, 000 are requested for necessary pay increases, compulsory benefits' cost hikes, and to rectify a housing benefit inequity.

During the past year 43 long-term research projects have been conducted by STRI's ten staff biologists, 18 projects ranging between one and two years by visiting postdoctoral and predoctoral fellows, and 40 projects of shorter term by visiting scientists.

Typical staff highlights included:

--the first explorations of Eastern Pacific shores of Western Panama discovering previously unknown large constructional coral reefs, nine species of fishes new to science and eleven new to the region, hydrocorals new to the Eastern Pacific and the first reported stable populations of the coral predator, the Crown of Thorns starfish. The STRI expeditions laid the basis for a new dimension of comparative Atlantic and Pacific analysis, as well as for uncovering natural controls for the predatory starfish that has been highly destructive elsewhere.

--behavior among animals is often critically affected by the success of their communication systems. Major advances were made at STRI in understanding the ways in which "messages, "whether simple or highly specialized, mediate among organisms, and with the environment.

--survival patterns were charted of a highly venomous sea snake widespread in the Pacific but nonexistent in the Western Atlantic in order to predict the colonization and distribution success of the animal should it gain access to the Atlantic through construction of a sea-level canal.

--on Barro Colorado Island, which has housed hundreds of separate studies for four decades, an accelerating recent effort including 16 long-term studies is laying the basis for the development of new methods, with possible broad applicability, for predicting the effects of environmental change on the survival of organisms.

The common denominator on these and nearly all promising efforts is that their productivity has been hampered greatly by the lack of reasonable support. Levels of support are far below national standards. Scientists and staff often work around-the-clock to substitute for support. Immediate needs include two field aides (marine, Barro Colorado) and one marine research launch operator, for $17,000 in salaries; partial make-up of travel shortages ($3,000); rectifying a practically zero consulting and computations funding capacity ($4,000); supply funding deficit of $400 per scientist ($4, 000); essential equipment needs for balances, drying ovens, freezer, and one four-wheel drive research vehicle ($6,000); for a total of three positions and $34, 000.

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2.

Facilities Operation Support (5 positions, $64,000)

World-wide biology is being enriched importantly by a belated but increasing focus on the tropics. STRI provides a base of operations for tropical research unique in this hemisphere and is acting increasingly as a work-ground and interchange point for collaborators from around the world (e.g., over the last twelve months, 23 leading biologists from the U. S. and Europe conducted advanced seminars at STRI). The following table shows the increased demands on STRI operations.

8,000

6,000

TOTAL VISITOR DAYS PER YEAR (SCIENTISTS AND ADV. STUDENTS, STRIPED)

,000

2,000

(INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY FROM LONGER WORK STAYS)

This demand is greatly welcome and offers promise of concerted advances on urgent biological problems of the Seventies. The effect is that STRI is crammed literally to the rafters with staff, fellows, and visiting scientists. Immediate needs include a marine station chief (the burden for planning and coordinating the greatly increasing number of complex marine laboratory and field visits must fall on the scientists--an inefficient and very costly solution. The marine stations have immediate need for a counterpart to BCI's station manager), one marine station janitor (none now), one general maintenance laborer for BCI, one electrician (none now) for all facilities, one messenger (only one on board now), for $25, 000 in salaries; make-up of shortages in utilities, supplies and fuel ($7, 000); work bench construction, and equipment maintenance