General. The capacity of modern computers and remote sensing techniques to store, analyse, and display large sets of data on all aspects of the geosphere and biosphere, is causing rapid changes in scientific perspective. However, we seem to be culturally and institutionally ill-equipped to deal with these new tools, primarily because their effective use requires collaborative research at unfamiliar levels of interaction. By contrast, our remote colleagues in nuclear physics have long become accustomed to working in consortia. The most serious hazard, in my view, is that the motivation and morale of the individual investigator, not to mention his or her ability to secure research funding, can be undermined by the emergence of large, multidisciplinary enterprises. One apprehension is that the individual investigator's data will be absorbed into a large "bank" to be used in large, often international projects, to the benefit of others.
We must find constructive means of both protecting the interests of the individual and taking full advantage of the exciting opportunities provided through the new technologies. One glimmer of hope is that some granting agencies (e.g. ours in Canada) are edging towards both recognition and encouragement of collaborative research, and we should be helping them to put in place acceptable means of both promoting and evaluating such endeavours. The challenges are, how do we ensure the maximum involvement and scope for innovation and significant intellectual satisfaction, without creating unmanageable bureaucratic monsters; how can funding be arranged to bring all participants together in workshops to ensure complete involvement?
The COHMAP-I example was notably successful, thanks to the astute guidance of the principals, and a happy mix of personalities.
Specifics. Pollen data bases grow apace. In North America, a northern group (Pat Anderson and Linda Brubaker, Seattle; Pat Bartlein, Eugene; Konrad Gajewski, Quebec; and Jim Ritchie, Toronto) are working with a set of modern pollen and climate that includes Tom Webb's Eastern North America data, together with a rich array of sites from Alaska, all of Canada except the western montane areas, and, thanks to Bent Fredskild's generosity, from Greenland.
Another regional North American group is assembling a similar data base for the southwestern region, and when that base is in place and available, the prospect of an entire North American pollen and climate data bank will be imminent. [See also next article, Ed.]
Pollen-climate networks have been assembled for parts of North Africa, in the eastern sector, centered on Ethiopia, by Raymonde Bonnefille and colleagues at Marseille, and for the central and western region by collaboration between Henry Lamb, Anne-Marie Lézine, Jim Ritchie, and Tom Webb.
Active discussion of aims and types of data base is in train in Europe, following the initiative of Bjorn Berglund and George Jacobson, and a workshop in Lund last year resulted in some tentative proposals. The central issues being discussed are, will the basebase be the traditional, archival type, or will it be a relational base that provides flexible access to many combinations of data? And should the first aim be for a continental base, or a number of regional bases that might later be merged? And what about the questions of proprietary rights to data and "intellectual property"? We need thorough discussion of these difficult issues now.