International Biological Program
The International Biological Program , German International Biological Program (abbreviated: IBP) was an ecological research program from 1964 to 1974. In his approaches were first large-scale research on the ecology applied. Although the results of the program were assessed as rather a failure by many scientists and no groundbreaking advances in knowledge were associated with it, it was of great importance for the organization and management of large-scale ecological research to this day.
History of the program
After the great success of the International Geophysical Year 1957/1958, numerous biologists noticed that ecology could benefit greatly from a similar program. Some biological investigations had already been carried out within the framework of the IGJ, albeit subordinate (especially in the Antarctic) and to a limited extent. British developmental biologist Conrad Hal Waddington became the head of the organizing committee for the new project . Continuity to the IGJ was established by the oceanographer Roger Revelle . The IBP started with a conference in Paris in 1964. Because of the complexity of data collection, the one-year limitation was abandoned. The initial goal was a period of approx. 5 to 7 years. The common theme for the project was the "Biological foundations of productivity and human welfare". The concept of ecology was still exotic at the time and practically unknown outside of the specialist field, which is why the program was introduced as a "biological" program in the title.
The operational phase of the program began in 1967. The program was internationally structured, with a national committee in each country under the leadership of the respective Academy of Sciences (in Germany the German Research Foundation ) leading and coordinating the work; there was no central funding or funding . The most ambitious part of the program was an intended, fundamental inventory of biocenotic relationships, food webs, and energy and material flows for entire biomes . In the world's most extensive subproject in the USA, tundra (in Point Barrow, Alaska), deserts (in Curley Valley, Utah), boreal coniferous forest (valley of the Cedar River near Seattle and HJAndrews Experimental Forest in Oregon), deciduous forest (various areas) and grasslands / Prairie (in Fort Collins, Colorado) edited. European contributions took place in almost all countries, with deciduous forests at the center of interest. The German contribution here was the Solling project . Important individual projects existed B. in Denmark ( beech forest near Aarhus ), in England (Meathop Wood), in Czechoslovakia (forest of Bab) and in Poland ( primeval forest of Bialowieza ). The intention was to decipher and model the entire ecosystem in its function.
Research approaches
The focus of the International Biological Program was on obtaining large, if possible even more comprehensive, data sets with quantitative data from the model systems examined. This quantification should be the basis for understanding and ultimately for modeling the entire system. Methods used included remote data sensing, e.g. B. by infrared photography, radar and sonar and measurement of material fluxes and food relationships through the controlled introduction of artificial isotopes. In many sub-projects, the abiotic site conditions, weather (including the existing weather inside forests), increment and element content as well as fundamental biological inventories of the entire spectrum of species were tackled for the first time.
Problems
From the beginning, it was a problem with the program that the data acquisition between the various individual projects was not carried out uniformly and in a standardized manner. This was mainly due to the fact that such standard methods simply did not exist; some of them were newly developed as part of the project. The planning of a central database could not be implemented either, the existing data was not saved in a standardized format. The ambitious expectations of getting a grip on entire ecosystems using cybernetics and systems analysis failed largely due to the complexity of the data. The mathematical modeling of ecosystems turned out to be a much more difficult problem than originally hoped and was (with the exception of a few extremely species-poor arctic biotopes) ultimately not achievable with the techniques and methods of the time. Measured against the original goals and expectations, the project was an almost complete failure.
If one does not take the somewhat lofty rhetoric and the wide-ranging goals of the initial phase as a basis, however, research has been carried out successfully in many places within the framework of the program. Perhaps the most important consequence of the program today is that working groups for ecology and ecosystem research have emerged at numerous universities and research institutions, some of which still shape the still young discipline today.
Follow-up projects
The research approaches developed within the framework of the International Biological Program were subsequently continued in a modified form. In the US, the most important follow-up project that was Long-Term Ecological Research program (LTER) for the long-term ecological research . Many projects in the UNESCO MAB program were continued internationally .
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- Elena Aronova, Karen S. Baker, Naomi Oreskes (2010): Big Science and Big Data in Biology: From the International Geophysical Year through the International Biological Program to the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, 1957 – Present , in: Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences Vol. 40, No. 2: 183-224.
- PMBoffey (1976): International biological program: Was it worth the cost and effort? Science Vol. 193 no. 4256: 866-868.
- Heinz Ellenberg , Robert Mayer, Jürgen Schauermann: Ecosystem Research. Results of the Solling project 1966-1986. Stuttgart (Ulmer Verlag) 1986. Chap. 1.2: “The International Biological Program” (p. 20).