IBP research in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Netherlands -- summer 1972

Abstract

"In the past few years the Coniferous Forest Biome (CFB) program has developed working contacts with scientists in Germany, Japan, and Australia. The success of these cooperative arrangements led to a continued exploration of coordination with scientists in other countries. This paper reports on a tour conducted through Belgium, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia during the summer of 1972 (Figure 1). The objectives of the tour were to investigate ways and means of developing: (1) direct communications between scientists within subject matter areas, thus bypassing elaborate Information channels of formal reports and publications; (2) cooperative field and modeling projects focused on specific subsystems such as decomposition processes, food chain processes, eutrophication-control processes, and the like; and (3) visiting scientist exchange programs for specific training, modeling, or research projects. The discussions during the tour with scientists combined with the visits of study sites in the various countries formed a basis for judgment as to which scientists of the CFB could profit most from specific exchanges of information and possible visiting scientist exchanges ..."--Introduction.