History

History of the International Biological Programme (IBP)

The IBP arose during the post-World War II era of expanding governmental support for science. Its inspiration was the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58, collaborative program that involved 67 countries and over 60,000 scientists in the study of the planet’s physical systems. IGY produced many notable advances, including earth-observing satellites (Sputnik I, and Explorer 1, which discovered the Van Allen radiation belt), and the start of long-term measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) on Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. The first-of-their-kind measurements of this potent “greenhouse gas” demonstrated two trends in atmospheric CO2 levels. First, CO2 was accumulating in the atmosphere – a predicted outcome of human activities like fossil-fuel burning. Second, the accumulation was set against background fluctuations of CO2 caused by natural processes such as plant growth, volcanic activity, and organic decomposition.

Impressed by the IGY’s success in its “Big Science” approach to “Big Problems”, a group of environmental scientists in Europe proposed a follow-up program – the International Biological Programme (IBP – to tackle the Big Problem of understanding energy/carbon flow through Earth’s ecological systems (“ecosystems” for short). By doing so, IBP hoped to understand factors that determine the ability of ecosystems to produce “goods” (like food) and “services” (like pest control or water purification or climate control) that are critical to human well-being. It was an aspirational program, spanning a decade (1964-1974), and involving over 50 countries and 1800 scientists in the U.S. alone.

The United States joined IBP in 1968 after Roger Revelle, a central figure in IGY and climate science, convinced Congress to appropriate funds to establish a new Ecosystems Studies program at the National Science Foundation. The US/IBP program focused on developing models of energy flow in five major North American ecosystems (biomes) – deciduous forest, coniferous forest, grassland, tundra, and desert – that would be ground- truthed (i.e., variables in the theoretical models would be measured in the field) at “validation” sites and compared with equivalent sites in other participating countries. For its time this was an incredibly complex and ambitious undertaking.

How the Silverbell site was chosen

The new (third) site was situated 10 km to the northwest and found to be similar enough to the Silverbell Mountain site that the research design didn’t need to be modified. The grazing lease on the new location was canceled by the BLM and mining leases were excluded. Thus, IBP Sonoran Desert studies got underway by early 1971 at the “new” Silverbell site and the Tucson Validation Site was called the Silverbell site in reports from then on. This is the site we discovered.

Who worked at the site

By virtue of its considerable arid lands expertise, the University of Arizona (UA) administered the Sonoran Desert Biome studies. John Thames in Renewable Natural Resources was the coordinator, and other UA scientists and their graduate students comprised most of the Tucson Basin validation site teams.

How the site and its remaining artifacts were assessed for determination of historic significance

To be eligible for the NRHP, cultural resources must have national, state, or local significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, or culture and be at least 50 years old, unless they are exceptionally significant. Cultural resources also must have sufficient integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association to convey their historic values and meet at least one of four criteria:

• § Be associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history (Criterion A)
• § Be associated with the lives of persons significant in our past (Criterion B)
• § Embody the distinct characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represents a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction (Criterion C)
• § Have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history (Criterion D)

Additionally, considerations of integrity were also applied during the evaluation of the site’s eligibility for inclusion in the NRHP. Integrity is defined by 36 CFR 60 as “the ability of a [site] to convey its significance,” and comprises seven primary aspects:

• § Location is the place where the historic property was constructed or the place where the historic event occurred.
• § Setting is the physical environment of a historic property.
• § Design is the combination of elements that create the form, plan, space, structure, and style of a property.
• § Materials are the physical elements that were combined or deposited during a particular period of time and in a particular pattern or configuration to form a historic property.
• § Workmanship is the physical evidence of the crafts of a particular culture or people during any given period in history or prehistory.
• § Feeling is a property’s expression of the aesthetic or historic sense of a particular period of time.
• § Association is the direct link between an important historic event or person and a historic property.

The IBP site was assessed for historic significance according to these standards and in consultation with the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). The BLM and the SHPO determined that the story of the IBP and the role it played in the history of the region, the country, and science as a whole is of immense historical importance – but that the site itself comprises discarded materials used by scientists in the unfolding of that story, and are not in themselves significant.

The significant “objects”: Artifacts vs knowledge building

The distinction boils down to one of representation. Historically significant sites and objects are those that convey their historicity and importance as-is. The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, for example, tell a story of architectural planning, massively organized group labor, cultural stylistic choices with regard to orientation and decoration, and much else besides. In the case of something like an artifact scatter, a classic example would be a Clovis or Folsom site like those in northern New Mexico, where the presence of historically distinctive and diagnostic Clovis or Folsom artifacts tell a story about how people were using the landscape eight- to twelve-thousand years ago.

In the case of the IBP, the story is a fascinating and extremely important one in the history of the country and the international scientific community, but the tools they used – and then discarded and left behind – aren’t historically distinctive or diagnostic in their own right. Small animal and “frass” insect traps were created for the project, and the flume and weather station foundation were created in situ by IBP researchers, but their design and materials were all pretty commonplace even today.