Scientific Collaboration Flourishes As Mongolia Throws Open Its Borders To Western Scientists

Among the growing number of collaborations being established between researchers from the United States and those of former communist countries, investigators from a variety of disciplines are calling a burgeoning relationship with one nation the scientific opportunity of a lifetime. They are referring to Mongolia, a country that until two years ago was virtually untrodden by Western scientists. After its peaceful, democratic "revolution" of 1992, Mongolia opened its borders and its economy to Westerners. Included in this outreach are leaders in the Mongolian science community who want to modernize their research capabilities and develop the country's natural resources. At the same time, the Mongolian people, according to U.S. scientists who have recently visited there, are also anxious to retain the pristine and diverse nature of their environment. Researchers say that Mongolia is a storehouse of biological information--from the rich fossil beds of the Gobi Desert to the unexplored ancient lakes in the Sayan Mountains. "Mongolia is a very large and extraordinarily interesting question, biologically and in very many other respects," maintains Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. The budding connections researchers from both countries are cultivating have a broader value, as well, Raven says. "Really, at heart, we [the U.S. and its science community] tend to do so little internationally," he comments. "After all, 78 percent of the people in the world live in developing countries, yet only have an estimated 6 percent of the world's scientists and engineers." Throughout Mongolia, re-searchers are taking part in cooperative projects--expeditions, educational exchanges, and sampling programs--covering such disciplines as paleontology, ecology, and atmospheric science. Scientists caution, however, that working in Mongolia is not without its challenges, both logistical and cultural. Western researchers have to import virtually all of the equipment they will need, and guides are essential to reach remote areas. While most Mongolian scientists are fluent in Russian, few of them know English, a situation that, according to some of their colleagues, has hampered their ability to stay current with Western science. Researchers hope current and proposed projects will eventually reverse this situation. Northern Mongolia and southern Russia are dotted with several unpolluted ancient lakes, and it is these that have drawn ecologists from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia to central Asia. The researchers traveled to Mongolia and Russia this past August on an expedition sponsored by the academy, the National Science Foundation's Division of International Programs, and a number of Philadelphia-based philanthropies. Scientists estimate that these lakes are between 40 million and 60 million years old, an environment where plants and animals have been evolving uninterrupted for millennia. Clyde Goulden, curator of environmental research for the academy, and colleagues from the Mongolian National University and a Mongolian environmental organization called Khan Altai-- which is strongly allied to the Buddhist church--visited Lake Hovsgul. This pristine body of water, never before studied by Western scientists, is situated north of the Mongolian steppe. Goulden predicts that the study of these lakes has the potential to add a tremendous amount of new information to evolutionary and ecological sciences. "I'm sure we're going to discover hundreds of new species of plants and animals," he maintains. "I think of these ancient lakes as being analogous to the tropical rainforests in terms of biodiversity. But it's deeper than merely describing a species and putting a name on it," he adds, referring to the fact that understanding the taxonomic relationships among the animals found in these lakes could be applied to theories of how species evolve. Additionally, the expedition prepared the way for mutually beneficial educational programs. "It's an exchange--our students will go over there and their students will come over here," notes Goulden. Environmental researchers Jim Ellis, Dennis Ojima, and colleagues from Colorado State University's Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory became involved with Mongolian scientists through their work on the ecology of Chinese grasslands. Ellis's participation started in 1990, when he chaired a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel investigating grazing lands in China. "We sort of branched out from our work in China into Mongolia," says Ellis. He and colleagues are currently involved in an independent, interdisciplinary group called the Grassland Ecosystems of the Mongolian Steppe (GEMS) Committee, which is made up of about 50 scientists--from nations including the U.S., Mongolia, and China--in such fields as ecology, anthropology, and climatology. Through connections with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and with support from various U.S. agencies, Ellis recounts, "we were able to support one Mongolian scientist to come to the United States." This researcher, Chuluun Togtohyn, has been working at Colorado State for about three years. Togtohyn, who has a Ph.D. in theoretical and mathematical biophysics from the University of Moscow, now considers himself an ecologist. Togtohyn notes his practical reasons for making the switch: "Mongolia is in a transition to a market economy, and my research was much more theoretical, not applied. I couldn't get much funding." He says working in the U.S. and collaborating with the laboratory has been very illuminating to him: "Science in Mongolia is still very young. Scientists have been trained mostly in Russia, where the scientific system is very different." In the U.S., he's found, at least in systems ecology, that science is "more interdisciplinary" than in Russia. "We [Mongolia] have very good scientists in different fields, but no integration." Togtohyn says he will eventually apply his new skills in ecosystem modeling to multidisciplinary projects with Mongolian colleagues in such fields as botany and agricultural sciences. For the American Museum of Natural History in New York, paleontological work in Mongolia is a renewal of old ties. In 1990, Mark Norell, associate curator in the department of vertebrate paleontology; provost Michael Novacek; Malcolm C. McKenna, Frick curator of vertebrate paleontology; and colleagues were invited by Mongolian paleontologists to participate in an ongoing program in the Gobi Desert. This expedition marked the first time that Western paleontologists were able to search for fossils in Mongolia since Roy Chapman Andrews--another museum-supported explorer--left the country in the late 1920s because of political unrest. Norell says Mongolia is one of the "greatest places to unearth fossils." In fact, during the museum's latest expedition there, investigators uncovered what they believe to be the first known fossil embryo of a carnivorous dinosaur. Norell also emphasizes the importance of educational and intellectual exchanges with Mongolian scientists. "Among the academics in Mongolia, there's really a perceived need to train the next generation of scientists," Norell explains. He also stresses that, after a period when the fossils will be studied in the U.S., all specimens will be returned and become part of the permanent collection of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. While paleontologists delve into the past, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are taking advantage of Mongolia's remote and unspoiled setting to study pres-ent-day environmental problems. Mongolia's sparse population--roughly 2 million people in an area twice the size of Texas--and lack of pollution facilitates the study of global carbon cycles. According to Pieter Tans, chief of the carbon cycle division, and research chemist Ed Dlugokencky--both of NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.--the Gobi Desert is an ideal location for sampling the air for such gases as carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide. NOAA started a sampling program in 1992 for these compounds to get additional data for its atmospheric-circulation models. For more than two years, researchers from the Mongolian Hydrometerological Research Institute have been regularly sending NOAA scientists flasks of Mongolian air for chemical analysis. Tans says this information is important "so that governments can make better projections of what's going to happen if they increase or decrease emissions [of these gases]." Scientists involved in these joint ventures point to several considerations in conducting science in Mongolia. One factor that many researchers stress is that, for these projects to be successful, they must be based on a foundation of mutual cooperation with Mongolian researchers. They emphasize that Mongolia's unique political, economic, and cultural history-- especially the country's centuries-old and tumultuous relationships with Russia and China--may influence, and even complicate, how new scientific relationships are shaped. "A point about Mongolian history that is crucial to understand for any scientific collaboration is that these people know very little about the Western world. They're sandwiched between Russia and China, and this has molded their view of Westerners," says Goulden. "But," he adds, "the paranoia that prevailed toward Westerners during most of this century is waning." Therefore, asserts Goulden, "it's fundamental that these projects are collaborative." Although currently proposed projects emphasize complete collaboration with counterparts at such places as the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Goulden says that research wasn't always conducted that way. "I don't want to generalize this to all of science done there, but in the past some Western scientists made promises to their Mongolian colleagues. However, they returned home and published the papers by themselves," he explains. "At first, they were very distrustful of myself until I told them I had worked in Russia in the past and we realized we had common acquaintances," he relates, referring to the time he spent in Russia with NAS's cultural exchange program in 1966. Yet another element that Goulden and Louis E. Sage, vice president of the Philadelphia academy, stress is imperative to take into account is the environmental ethic that is so pervasive among the people. "It's going to be a very important part of doing science there. [Mongolians] have very strong feelings about the environment," Goulden says. "The reason they were so enthusiastic about our being there is that we could give them the background information they need to build the infrastructure for ecotourism." The Mongolians' desire to wisely develop their resources is one of the reasons the Philadelphia academy first became involved, says Sage, leader of the academy's expedition. About two years ago, Lama Samyev Tenzin, abbot of the Buddhist church of St. Petersburg and a native of Buryatia, Russia--an area with historical ties to Mongolia--approached the academy through Sage, who visited Lake Baikal and other similar-aged lakes in nearby Russia as part of the trip. "Lama Tenzin was looking for ways to explore the potential for ecotourism as a nonexploitative type of commercialism in this region of central Asia," recounts Sage.

Scientific Collaboration Flourishes As Mongolia Throws Open Its Borders To Western Scientists

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