by Suzanna Engman

Photo provide by Elisabeth C. Odum

When those who worked with H.T. Odum talk about him, it is with a mixture of awe and respect. An ecologist who migrated to Puerto Rico to work at the Puerto Rico Nuclear Center (PRNC), Odum was the epitome of what every ecologist aspires to be: the author of some 300 publications; a researcher accomplished in myriad disciplines, including zoology, botany, environmental sciences and engineering, ecology, meteorology, ornithology, geology, geochemistry, economics, aquatic ecosystems, and large-scale ecosystems metabolism; a researcher light-years ahead of others in systems-based ecology—and a humanitarian interested in applying his findings to social and economic problems.

Odum arrived in Puerto Rico to direct the Rain Forest Project, sponsored by the PRNC in 1963. The PRNC had obtained funding for an unprecedented study of a tropical rain forest to assess the consequences of irradiation of gamma rays on a rain forest ecosystem. After the experiment in 1965, more than a dozen scientists recorded the ecosystem and regeneration of the flora and fauna. Odum collected their papers, generated from the rain forest experiment, into a 4.6 kg tome, A Tropical Rain Forest: A Study of Irradiation and Ecology at El Verde, Puerto Rico (some 1660 pages), which ecologists in Puerto Rico refer to as “The Bible.” Some say that the 1970 publication is the most comprehensive study of a rain forest ecological system ever written. In addition, Odum also described in detail the climate of the Luquillo Mountain and demonstrated how to measure large-scale forest metabolism by isolating a section of forest within a giant plastic cylinder.

Odum stayed in Puerto Rico until 1966, studying every aspect of the rain forest ecosystem and gathering data for his theory of ecological economics, based on “emergy,” a measurement of energy necessary to sustain a reasonable standard of living per person. The Prosperous Way Down (2001), Odum’s last book-length publication, co-authored by his wife, Elisabeth C. Odum, begins with the premise that resource depletion and rising costs will cause the global economy to contract. Either we adapt to the changing conditions or the crash could be devastating. The authors conclude that “Decisive changes in attitudes and practices can divert a destructive collapse, leading instead to a prosperous way down.”