Pentagon To Increase Its Role In Environmental Research

But while access to DOD data could be a boon to global change scientists, some of them worry about ties with the military WASHINGTON--The Department of Defense is planning a dramatic increase in its support of environmental research that could provide scientists with valuable data and resources in their study of global change. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has proposed DOD's first-ever direct contribution next year to the government's interagency global research program, and last month Congress approved a plan to give civilian scientists access to certain DOD data, computer time, and other departmental resources. The Pentagon's increased involvement could be a boon to the thousands of climatologists, atmospheric and ocean scientists, and computer modelers who monitor and study changes in the earth's climate. Access to data collected by military submarines that patrol beneath the Arctic Circle, for example, could provide information on ice compactness and thickness that is impossible for civilian scientists to obtain on their own. Years of interest in the dynamics of the ocean give the Navy a head start in understanding such important research questions as how energy is transferred between the oceans and the atmosphere, or how sediments build up in the Arctic region. "Without DOD, the U.S. Global Change Research Program has been like an enormous jigsaw puzzle," says Robert Corell, vice chairman of the Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES), which oversees the $1 billion program. "Now the picture will be complete. They have a lot of good, clean research to offer," says Corell, who runs the National Science Foundation's directorate for the geological sciences. ONR is hoping to spend $6.3 million on the global change program in fiscal year 1992, which begins next October. Members of the multi-agency global change program say they are excited by what they can glean from the Defense Department's years of experience in ocean and atmospheric research and in climate modeling. In addition, as part of the $200 million Strategic Environmental Research Program (SERP) adopted last month by Congress as part of the Defense Department's 1991 budget, data on ocean and atmospheric conditions gathered for military use would be analyzed and passed on to scientists. New acoustic probes attached to military submarines may send scientists data on ocean currents, top-ography, and temperature. Available time on supercomputers once dedicated to nuclear weapons modeling and the Strategic Defense Initiative will be turned over to civilian climate modelers. Many scientists, however, are less than thrilled by the prospect of increased military involvement in global change research. They are concerned that the two approaches are not compatible. "You can't go back to the people who measured the missile silos and have them do environmental research. It just won't be credible in the environmental research community," says Michael Glantz, who runs the environmental and social impacts group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "The DOD is doing research simply as a way to stay occupied until more conflict comes along." Dale Jamieson, director of the Center for Values and Social Policy at the University of Colorado, fears that increased military spending on environmental research could leave civilian scientists vulnerable to the vagaries of the defense budget. "I'm particularly unhappy about the way national [military] research priorities lurch around," says Jamieson. "During a military down period, the DOD says to itself, `We want an increase in our budget, so we have to rename our program.' With the end of the Cold War, it's in their interest to do environmental research. But an escalation in the Middle East would clearly trump that. The result will be people trying to organize a research program that later disappears." Scientists and policy experts like Glantz and Jamieson also worry that the secrecy traditionally associated with the military will hamper the ability of scientists to work with whatever weather and climate data are released through SERP. Most agree this is not as much of a problem with the Navy's participation in the global change program, in which each agency's research is carefully monitored and peer-reviewed by CEES as well as by outside scientists. But under SERP it likely will be up to the DOD to select which data it wants to release and in what form it will be. Without access to complete data sets and background information, some scientists feel that the material may be useless to them. They also fear that working with previously classified data may restrict their ability to publish. "That [fear] is a red herring," says Fred Saalfeld, director of the Office of Naval Research, which will orchestrate the release of much of the SERP data. "We would cut them off at the knees and take away their money if they didn't publish." But others believe that, regardless of their good intentions, it is the nature of the military to be secretive about its information. "For many cultural and political reasons it is difficult to mix civilian and military research," says Jack Fellows, a budget examiner at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). "Scientists in the military have a definite responsibility to keep much of their work secret, and university scientists can't work under those conditions." But whatever problems civilians face, he adds, the wealth of data they will receive through SERP will make it worth the trouble. Department officials such as Saalfeld admit the Navy has a vested interest in getting involved in the global change program. In the past, Saalfeld says, some of the top minds in ocean science have been dedicated to the Navy's goals: a scientific understanding of the topography, and behavior of the ocean. But these scientists have been deserting the ship in recent years, he explains. "I asked myself, `Are we getting the best minds on scientific research programs that impact on the Navy's mission?' " Saalfeld says about a series of meetings last winter, in which he sat in the back of the room and listened to other agencies discuss their plans for the global change program. "The answer was clearly no. The mainstream of intellectual thought was going into global change research." So he convinced his bosses to reassign $6.3 million in DOD funds for fiscal year 1992 to global change research. That money will be spent on ocean measurements, the study of high latitude dynamics, ocean ecological dynamics, and boundary layer dynamics, as well as on the development of regional resolving models. At the same time that the Navy can do its part for the popular area of environmental research, says Saal-feld, it can also maintain its own military-directed work. "With the ocean measurements, for example, we will use sound waves to measure the temperature of the ocean," he says. "If our hypothesis is correct, after five to 10 years we will have the first definitive measurements to see if there is global climate change. The direct benefit to the military side of the Navy is it would find out a lot of invaluable information on eddies, currents, and shoals." Both sides will benefit from the collaboration, says OMB's Fellows. "Each agency contributes its own particular talents to the program," he says. "DOD has a strong data management and computer modeling system: they know how to collect data, study processes, and develop models and do it all in the right sequence. They could contribute a lot by being recipients of NASA data, for instance. In return, by lending their talent for analysis, DOD researchers might come up with competitive models and theories." While DOD officials expect to gain a lot from the global change program, they envision a smaller payback from SERP. Science administrators grimace at the thought of how much time will be needed to analyze and disseminate the mountains of military data, parts of which are still classified. "The Navy takes surveys under the ice for operations and tactical purposes that would be extremely useful to researchers," admits Saalfeld. "But the ticklish part is not endangering security. It will be difficult [for the Office of the Oceanographer] to do this." DOD's Office of the Oceanographer has already begun the task of looking though the piles of naval data, and it is not happy. "We're not going to just open up all our databases to the academic community and say `Hey, go ahead and walk around,' " says Robert Winokur, technical director in the Office of the Oceanographer. "If they want something, they're going to ask for it by name. We won't be providing a catalog." Eileen Shea, executive director of the climate and global change program at NOAA, sees a way to handle some of the Navy's problems. A CEES working group of which she is a member is conferring with ONR to come up with a list of data sets. "We are looking at the global observation and ocean data sets so we can get the ones most useful for global change research declassified," she says. She also hopes that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--which is experienced in "manipulating and massaging data" for public consump- tion--would have access to some of the top-secret data that might not otherwise be released. The CEES could play the role of peer reviewer for the DOD data as well, she says. Shea believes this plan would also take care of expected complaints by scientists that the data are tainted because they have not been monitored by an outside body. "We are suggesting that any global change research project that is developed as a result of the SERP proposal should be coordinated with CEES, so as not to duplicate research, data analysis, and collection," she says. She suggests placing a CEES member on the proposed SERP coordinating council. Feeding the data and analysis that come out of SERP directly into the global change program, she and others say, would put both of DOD's new research programs on a stronger footing.

Pentagon To Increase Its Role In Environmental Research

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