Sitting at the interface of human societies and the natural environment are sentinels tracking environmental change. Across the globe, field stations and marine laboratories (FSMLs) amass crucial information about climate, biodiversity, environmental health, and emerging diseases, anchoring multidecadal data sets needed to solve environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. These observatories are now in danger of being shut down—part of the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On every continent, facilities have been shuttered and field courses canceled because of restricted travel. This has reduced the flow of financial support to these stations, debilitating their capacity to collect essential information and train the next generation of scientists. Two-thirds of university support for the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in eastern Ecuador—situated in Earth’s most biologically diverse region, at the confluence of the Amazon Basin and Andes—came from international universities, nearly all of which was permanently terminated during the pandemic. The renowned Asa Wright Centre in Trinidad and Tobago closed in April. Further, FSML budgets are menaced by pandemic-related deficits suffered by their parent institutions—which are generally universities (a reflection of their importance to education and training) but also include museums, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations—potentially compromising every facet of their operations. To view the full article visit Science.