Ecology

Gary Peresta Environmental engineer Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater Salary --$70,000 Age --49 Years on the job --17 How he got started --With a degree in agricultural engineering, Peresta joined the Peace Corps, which assigned him to Jamaica, where he ran a fruit-canning factory. Afterward he took a job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a physical science technician studying the impact of elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) on cotton. When a similar job became available at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, a 3,000-acre research facility on the shores of the Rhode River and Muddy Creek in Edgewater, he jumped at the opportunity.

Howard County government appears headed toward having a stronger, higher-profile environmental presence, but a group of volunteers is struggling with the question of what form such an agency should take. Pushing ideas to improve the environment is one thing, but having the power to make them happen is another, which is why members of the Commission on the Environment and Sustainability were examining the options this week at a meeting in the George Howard Building in Ellicott City. Should county government have a new, full-fledged Department of the Environment?

WASHINGTON -- Intelligence analysts are once again entangled in political controversy, but this time the topic is the environment. Some in Congress want U.S. intelligence agencies to produce a comprehensive report on the security impacts of climate change. But Republican critics contend that intelligence analysts have more important things to do. "The intelligence community continues to be so inadequate at addressing today's pressing problems that we shouldn't be diverting its attention," said Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

The proliferation of drifting Antarctic icebergs caused by rising temperatures is creating a vast new ecosystem of plankton, krill and seabirds that might have the power to absorb some of the carbon dioxide that is driving global warming, scientists reported yesterday. The researchers, led by oceanographer Kenneth Smith Jr. of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, found that these iceberg-associated communities could cover a significant portion of Antarctic seas. The ecosystems use photosynthesis to take carbon from the atmosphere and convert it into plant life and other forms of organic carbon that can be held in the ocean.

Moscow -- In Russia, nothing - perhaps save Vladimir V. Putin - is as supreme as oil. Profits from drilling it, and selling it at historically high prices, have filled state coffers - and private pockets. Entire towns have been built on oil's back; the capital of one resource-rich Siberian region, Khanty-Mansisk, has a new airport, seaport, university and art gallery. Oil pipelines have been proposed, or are under construction, in every direction from Moscow. So-called black gold has given the country a reason, once again, to strut on the global stage.

Hardy Californians: A Woman's Life With Native Plants Lester Rowntree University of California Press / 310 pages / $19.95 paper Who is the next Rachel Carson? It's a question you hear a lot in environmental circles. Where is the writer who can bridge the gap between poetry and science? Where is the book whose message is so accessible, so imperative, that it inspires not only activism but legislation? In his introduction to the 1994 edition of Silent Spring, Al Gore wrote that it and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin "rank among the rare books that have transformed our society."

The River Hill High School Ecology Club will sponsor a free showing of former Vice President Al Gore's film about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, at 7 p.m. Jan. 11 at the school auditorium, 12101 Route 108, Clarksville. The screening, which is open to everyone, will include a "What Can We Do?" follow-up presentation and a bake sale. Proceeds from the sale will help support the Ecology Club. The club is working to promote energy efficiency through the increased use of compact fluorescent lighting and has set a goal to collect 100 pledges to substitute a compact fluorescent light bulb for one incandescent bulb.

Finksburg residents are awaiting the construction of an environmentally-friendly library, a project that is running about a year behind schedule. The new Finksburg library goes out to bid in March, with construction expected to take 16 months, Carroll County officials have said. Residents were told early last year that library construction would begin this spring and take one year to complete, according to Jim Johnson, president of the Finksburg Planning and Citizens' Council. "The library is probably the nicest thing that the county has offered us in a long time," Johnson said.

Ecological message part of terrapin tale Rascal, a one-year-old terrapin, stretches his neck out while he suns himself on a rock, his mouth turned upward in what appears to be a permanent grin. The small turtle lives up to his name, hurriedly scampering away from his owner's reach. "Turtles have great personalities," said Jennifer Keats Curtis, 37, Rascal's owner. "They're not shy, and they're fast."

It is one of those exquisitely choreographed moments in nature: A small bird on its way from the bottom of the world to its breeding ground at the top encounters its nutritional lifeline as it lands on sandy beaches along the Delaware Bay. Red knots arrive from South America, exhausted and emaciated. Horseshoe crabs swim from sea to shore, following their prehistoric instinct to procreate. They get together each spring for their annual date, a two-week springtime feast and orgy that has been performed longer than humans have been recording such things.