From: C
Subject: Help the CNIE Identify Holes in the Federal Research Funding
Infrastructure
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
HELP CNIE TO IDENTIFY HOLES IN THE FEDERAL RESEARCH FUNDING
INFRASTRUCTURE
July 15, 1998
The web version of this document is available at:
http://www.cnie.org/updates/46.htmt/vines/6883ched98.html
One of the motivating needs behind the National Institute for the
Environment is a class of environmental topics that are poorly addressed
by the present science programs. These topics tend to be
multi-disciplinary, long-term and cross-agency, bringing together
questions about humans and the environment. They often span the
spectrum between fundamental and applied approaches. In some cases,
there may be small amounts of research funding ($5 million or less) that
touch on the problem, but not nearly enough to truly understand the
issue sufficiently to prevent, resolve, or remediate these concerns.
Examples that CNIE has gathered include:
** Endocrine disrupters
** Declining and deformed amphibians
** Environmental justice
** Population and environment linkages
** Distinguishing between natural variation and anthropogenic causes of
environmental change
** Earth science bases for urban development
** Urban impacts on estuarine systems
** Evaluation of methods of risk assessment
** Marine conservation biology
** Characteristics of sustainable development
** Environmental design
We would like to add to this list of topics and be specific about what
science is not being funded because it does not fit within the structure
and missions of federal funding agencies.
PLEASE HELP US BY SENDING EXAMPLES of the types of environmental
research that cannot be addressed through the present structures for
funding environmental research.
If you are a researcher, please send us an example of your top
"environmental research proposal that you didn't write because there was
no place to submit it".
If you are a manager or decisionmaker, give us an example of
environmental problems you are dealing with where "lack of science is a
barrier to sound decisionmaking and where you are unable to get the
scientific answers that you need."
Don't send us a full proposal - just a title and a few paragraphs of
explanation: why it is important, and why it doesn't fit with existing
funding programs. The following example was submitted by Dr. Peter
Richerson of U. California-Davis:
MERCURY ECOTOXICOLOGY:
Mercury contamination is a serious problem in the Western U.S. where
mercury was mined and where it was used in precious metals extraction.
The problems in the West have a number of similarities and differences
with contamination from atmospheric and industrial sources in other
parts of the world. In the West, rather large sums of money will be
spent to remediate sources of mercury.
The current scientific state of the art is not sufficient to make
sensible recommendations for remediation strategies. It is just within
the realm of possibility to do reasonably complete mass balances for
mercury and so to understand how the flows of mercury from contaminated
sites might best be reduced.
One of the most difficult problems is to estimate rates of methylation
of mercury. Particularly in the Western sites, where mercury has been
widely distributed by mining activities in the last century, controlling
the flow of methylmercury from the inorganic reservoir is the best hope
for remediation. Because of high analytical costs, most research
programs that can be conducted with available funding are quite small
scale. Some of the best data is likely to come from Superfund Ecological
Assessments simply because the Superfund can afford the analytical
costs. However, "research" is forbidden on Superfund projects, so it is
not possible to set and implement a research agenda under Superfund
auspices.
What is needed is a way for the mercury research and remediation
communities to meet to hammer out a research agenda that is synergistic
with ongoing remediation assessment needs, and, of course, to locate
sufficient research resources and an interested funder to implement the
agenda.
- Dr. Peter Richerson, University of California at Davis
--
Kevin Hutton, Webmaster
Committee for the National Institute for the Environment
1725 K Street, NW Suite 212 Phone 202/530-5810
Washington, D.C. 20006-1401 Fax 202/628-4311
khutton@cnie.org http://www.cnie.org/updates/46.htmt/vines/6883ched98.html