wawa --4genni.mlw DOM INA KINAERSLEV; SOURCE FOR WATER FACT WATER RESOURCFS f4A.VACEM Frontt nes SCIENCEBUSINESSNATURETECHNOLOGYCULTUREPOUTICS EARTHS SECRETS Now might soil bacteria be affected by global warming', BIOLOGISTS DIG DEEPER Canada's new Biotron superlab contains miniature chunks of the natural world that will help us predict the impact of climate change on living organisms BY LINDSAY BORTH WICK GROUP OF PLANT SCIENTISTS GATHERED IN VIENNA IN 2005 AT THE International Botanical Congress. The meeting was pretty much what you would expect until its conclusion, when the congress declared: "As a matter of urgency, facilities for controlled, ecosystem-scale experiments are required now." With- out a better toolbox to study how the natural world responds to global climate change, "sustained human habitability of Earth" would be at risk. Fortunately, just such a toolbox was already being designed by Norman Winer, a Canadian biochemist and plant biologist. Htiner had begun work on his Biotron Institute for Experimental Climate Change Research in 1999. In early 2008 it will open its doors, the first facility in the • Atebtionsumm,..iii* per capita water consumption in the United States: 660,430 gallons. In China: 184,920 gallons WINTER 2008 Peace in The Garden LAST FALL IN THE GERMAN city of Kassel.. a group of about 15 women harvested a bumper crop of pumpkins, squash, and wine grapes from a small community gar- den. Nothing unusual there, perhaps—except that the women were from Morocco, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia. The "intercultural garden" in Kassel is one of about 100 in Germany, but the only one run entirely by women. (And after the gardeners had long discussions about the haz- ards of pesticides, its produce will be totally organic.) The gardens began in 1495, after a group of Bosnian women in Gottingen, waiting out the Balkan conflict, told social workers how much they missed the famous p