Model Ecosystem

In 1960 F. Herbert Bormann and Gene Likens developed a new way of measuring the effects of humans on the environment. Rather than examine one element of nature at a time, the two Dartmouth biologists chose to study the interaction of all the elements in an entire ecosystem.

Three years later they established an ecosystem study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains a 7,500-acre watershed that became the first model for a new science. Researchers working at the site have investigated songbird populations, acid rain, forest clearcutting and the pollutants carried in cloud vapor. Congressional staff used research from Hubbard Brook in drafting the Clean Air Act of 1990.

Last year Likens and Bormann shared the annual $150,000 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, chosen by a panel of distinguished scientists. (A previous winner: C. Everett Koop '37.)