The next day, on a nearby tract of land, a California elementary school teacher and a New Hampshire accountant, both also "on holiday," assessed the health of some 250 baby alder, ash, and sycamore trees that had been planted about a year earlier. Assisting the two Americans were Anatoly Mandych, the director of the Coastal Geographic Systems Laboratory at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and Marin Penkov, chairman of the national land council of Bulgaria, who, in addition to his state position, is a soil scientist.
The nonscientists from the U.S. and England were four of the 12 members of the first of two teams of Earthwatch volunteers who came to Wales to help Martin Haigh, a soil scientist and lecturer at Oxford Polytechnic in England, on his mission to save the decaying soil of this former Welsh coal mining district. For the past 4 1/2 years Haigh has ...
