their environment, and short-to-long-term monitoring of areas, 

 populations, or biota. 



The Smithsonian Oceanographic Sorting Center (SOSC) is a 

 service unit of the Smithsonian Institution operated by the 

 Oceanography and Limnology Program. Acting as a central 

 processing laboratory, SOSC receives, sorts, records, curates, and 

 distributes marine as well as freshwater collections in order to 

 efficiently and accurately make these collections available to 

 specialists. In addition to these services, SOSC performs analyses of 

 biological samples through the computer facilities of its Records 

 Section and the data are prepared in a machine-readable and rapidly 

 retrievable form. 



Patterned after the Smithsonian Oceanographic Sorting Center 

 and maintained in Tunisia through the use of P.L. 480 excess 

 currency funds, the Mediterranean Marine Sorting Center (MMSC) 

 processes marine biological specimens from the Mediterranean Sea. 

 In addition to providing sorting services, the MMSC serves an 

 important function in the training of marine technicians from 

 developing countries throughout the Mediterranean region. 



The Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies is 

 conducting long-term ecosystem study of the Rhode River estuary, 

 involving scientists from the National Museum of Natural History, 

 the Radiation Biology Laboratory, and various institutions. The goal 

 of this research program is to determine the effects of environmental 

 fluctuations on ecosystem stability. These investigations will help 

 identify those parameters most sensitive to changes in 

 environmental conditions, and also improve our understanding of 

 the causal relationships in such systems, which is required for 

 successful environmental prediction. Research projects include 

 ground-truth evaluation of remote sensing and other aerial 

 photographic techniques. 



The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), located in 

 Panama, has a fourfold program: research on basic biological 

 processes, support of advanced training and higher education 

 through research, support of research in the tropics by others, and 

 work on behalf of conservation in the tropics. While encouraging 

 collection of data on tropical biota and environments, biologists of 

 STRI and many other visiting scientists focus attention on such 

 subjects as the establishment of reproductive isolation among 

 related species, the ecology of coral reefs, species diversity in 

 different parts of both the New and Old World tropics, effects of oil 

 pollution, ramifications of an interoceanic canal, parasitism, 

 mimicry, predator-prey strategies, and mathematical theories of 

 evolution and community ecology. 



The Fort Pierce Bureau is a recently-established facility of the 

 Smithsonian Institution at Link Port, located on the Indian River 

 between Fort Pierce and Vero Beach, Florida. A primary mission of 



111 



