The Georgia
Envirotron
in Griffin, Ga., is a one-of-a-kind environmental
control facility. Dedicated June 9, the University of Georgia
center will help scientists worldwide
study the effects of global change on plants.
Gerald
Arkin heads the Griffin
campus of the UGA College of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences. He
said the discovery of new knowledge through the
Envirotron “will benefit Georgia, the
Southeast, the nation and the world.”
The $1.26 million facility allows researchers to
study how a number of stresses affect
plants. Scientists can control the temperature,
humidity, light, pollutants and
atmospheric gases.
The Envirotron provides controlled environments to
study anything from single plants to
entire landscapes.
Researchers use indoor growth chambers to study
plants, pests and diseases. Greenhouses
allow researchers to simulate crops in the field. And
movable sunlit chambers were
designed for landscape-level research.
The Envirotron will eventually allow off-site
researchers to access data through the
Internet.
Arkin said the idea for the Envirotron began in 1991
at a National Institute for Global
Environmental Change conference. About 250 scientists
had gathered to find an engineering
response to global change.
“Some good ideas came forward,” he
said. “One of the
challenging concepts was the need for facilities that
would allow us to better address
global change.”
Some such facilities were already out
there. But they didn’t go far
enough, Arkin said.
“Those scientists suggested that the new
facilities allow them and
their colleagues to work together,” he said. “And they
wanted to study not just
aboveground phenomena affecting plants and ecosystems.
They wanted to study, at the same
time, both above- and belowground phenomena affected by
global change.”
In 1992, scientists from NASA, the Department of Energy, the
U.S.
Department of Agriculture and others in the
Southeast conducted a study. They found
enough value in building such a facility in the
Southeast.
The group chose the region because of
the importance of farming, the
diversity of plants, the many soil types and the
climate.
Grants from the Georgia Environmental
Technology Consortium, a unit of the
Georgia Research
Alliance, funded the Envirotron.
The GRA helps build research facilities to promote
economic growth in the state. It
funded the Envirotron through the GETC air quality
program to address such issues as how
pollution affects crops and how plants and soils
neutralize or reduce man-made pollutants.
The UGA Office of
the Vice President for Research
and the College of
Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences provided funds, too.
“Our vision is that scientists, working in
multidisciplinary and multi-agency
teams and in partnership with industry, will address the
complex environmental issues that
impact all our lives,” Arkin said. “We also envisioned
that this facility will
spin off new technologies with this teamwork of
scientists.”
Scientists from Germany, Japan and Thailand are
already using the Envirotron.
“The Georgia Envirotron is one of several programs
the College has undertaken to
strengthen the cooperation between agricultural and
environmental sciences,” said
CAES Associate Dean Ivery Clifton . “In
fact, cooperation is one of the principles that guided
its design and is built into its
operating plan.”
The Envirotron is unique. But it isn’t complete.
Arkin said the scientists who planned
it expect it to grow.
“We expect it to accommodate the science necessary to
attack more robust and more
complex issues,” he said, “as we move down the path to
research discovery.”
