This award supports an international workshop on salt lake ecosystems to be held in Bolivia in March, 1991. The U.S. organizer is Stuart Hurlbert of San Diego State University. His counterpart in Bolivia is Carlos Arce of the League for the Defense of the Environment. In addition there is an organizing committee consisting of three other scientists, three from Bolivia and one from France. The participants include scientists from a wide spectrum of disciplines ranging from brine geochemistry to crustacean systematics to avian ecology. They represent 24 different countries; 19 arefrom Latin America, 32 from North America, 22 from Europe,4 from Africa, 4 from the Mideast, 5 from Russia, 6 from Australia and 7 from Asia. The workshop will include contributed and invited talks, panel discussions, field trips to saline lakes and a six-day excursion after the meeting to view saline lakes and the general geography of the altiplano (high plane). This is the first of these symposia to be held in Latin America and therefore represents an important opportunity for Latin American scientists to interact with U.S. and world scientists in this field. In this way, this activity fulfills the goals of the Science in Developing Countries program.
