Penn State's Bard of Biodiversity

Ke Chung Kim, called "K. C." by nearly everyone at Penn State, is a taxonomist by training and by avocation. Webster's defines taxonomy as "orderly classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships." When Kim finds a new species, he builds a case to prove that the bug, bird, or bass is indeed a previously undiscovered organism. Many taxonomists spend their careers classifying a single type of organism, but not Kim.

While he has done ground-breaking classification research on sucking lice, black flies, and other insects, Kim and some Penn State colleagues recently have been looking for a bigger playing field. Something, say, the size of Pennsylvania. For the past decade, Kim and other scientists in the College have been exploring the biodiversity of Pennsylvania and other parts of the world. He is working to make the University a major player in studying biodiversity, largely by leading an effort to form a clear picture of the state's natural biological bounty. As director of the Penn State Center for BioDiversity Research, Kim is building a solid foundation to educate Pennsylvanians about biodiversity. "We established the center in 1989 to mobilize the faculty to spearhead research and make the rest of the campus aware of biodiversity issues," Kim recalls. He also matches Penn State researchers from various academic fields, such as biology, anthropology, botany, geography, and the agricultural sciences, with research projects relating to biodiversity.

In 1990, Kim organized "Biodiversity and Landscapes," a two-day international symposium at the University Park campus. The symposium resulted in a book, Biodiversity and Landscapes: A Paradox of Humanity, one of the first projects to come out of the center. Later, the center published the Pennsylvania Biodiversity Technical Committee's Conserving Penn-sylvania's Native Biological Diversity, which gave state agencies involved in natural resources and wildlife--the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and the Fish and Boat Commission--a common base of information on studying and maintaining biodiversity in the Commonwealth.

Organizing investigations into biodiversity is still a large part of Kim's vision for the center, but the scientist soon realized that good intentions and grand plans can be wasted without public support. "I naively thought that Conserving Pennsylvania's Native Biological Diversity would serve as a blueprint to map out statewide strategies to address biodiversity," Kim says. "Soon different interest groups began to lobby against parts of the plan, and I realized we couldn't go ahead without first educating the public on the issues."

Kim is planning a series of pamphlets aimed at citizens and public officials. The booklets will illustrate Pennsylvania's biodi-versity by explaining how many organisms it takes to prepare a meal, build a house, or feed a wild turkey. The publications also will address how natural chemicals are manufactured, species diversity, recreation issues, and other topics. "The publications stress that biodiversity is not an isolated intellectual exercise," he says. "It is important in everything we do every day."

In the last decade, Kim has seen significant advances in how Pennsylvania conserves its biological bounty. He points to increased cooperation between Penn State researchers and the three state natural resource agencies. He and Penn State ichthyologist Jay Stauffer have proposed a Penn State Center for Biodiversity and Systematics, a project designed to bring the University together with Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences to educate specialists in taxonomy and biodiversity in order to inventory global biodiversity.

Counting the vast amount of species in Pennsylvania is certainly a daunting task, even to scientists as dedicated as Kim. Luckily, he's done it before and in a place much less hospitable than the most barren landscape in Pennsylvania. Kim, a native of South Korea, led a major scientific effort to protect the biodiversity of Korea by treating the 366-square-mile Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea as if it were a nature reserve. Kim calls his effort the Korea Peace Bioreserves System. Because the DMZ, created in 1953, has been untouched for more than 40 years since the end of the Korean War, the area could be the only source of native species for rebuilding a natural legacy that has been ravaged by development. This summer, he and other researchers plan to convene an international conference on the preservation of the DMZ ecosystem.

"In many developing countries, leaders are so intent on economic development that they sacrifice everything else in the country--habitats, land, and water resources--which ultimately kills living things," he says. "In most of those countries, conservation really means restoration." Kim mobilized 150 Korean scientists to establish a baseline for Korea's conservation, a project called Biodiversity Korea 2000, that ended in 1994.

Kim currently serves as president of the Pennsylvania Biological Survey, an organization started in 1979 to inventory the state's flora and fauna. Scientists from Penn State, state agencies, and other universities and conservancies are working together to eventually link this vast collection of information into a usable database. Members of committees studying insects, mammals, birds, fish, and other fauna also play an advisory role for state wildlife agencies. This year, the group plans to hold a conference to outline bioreservation, the concept of using linked conservation areas as a resource for rebuilding and conserving biodiversity. "Pennsylvania has so many conservation areas," he explains. "There are national parks, state parks, and conservation areas overseen by the state; there are municipal areas; and there are large and small conservation areas in private hands. These areas are mostly scattered and unconnected, and not tied to a central database where researchers and others can find out what is there."

Nearly a decade after starting the Center for BioDiversity Research, Kim is pleased with the progress he and his colleagues have made, although he confesses he thought the project would be further along. He realizes that research into biodiversity by definition will be like finding the best way to eat an elephant--one bite at a time. "The best thing we can do is keep plugging away in steplike fashion," Kim says. "It may not seem like a very orderly way to create the whole picture, but it works."

–John Wall