The Carroll County Times
science... at your fingertips
Biologist brings a bit of science fact into his fiction;
Michael Barbour and Marcus
Bowersox use a fine screen,
above, to look for water insects.
-Ken Koons/staff photo
Chad Gunnings is an aquatic biologist, and so is Michael Barbour.
In fact, Gunnings and Barbour have a lot in common. They are both doctors, with Ph.D.s in environmental science; they both work for companies that have them travel to remote, sometimes dangerous, locations throughout the United States and the world; and they both hold black belts in tae kwon do.
In all, there is very little that separates Gunnings and Barbour besides age - Gunnings is about 20 years younger - and the fact that Barbour is real, while Gunnings is not.
Gunnings is the lead character in Barbour's debut novel, "The Kenai Catastrophe," out now from Rebel Publishing.
"Admittedly, Chad Gunnings is patterned after me," said Barbour from his office at Tetra Tech Inc. in Owings Mills, "with none of my weak points and all of my strengths."
Barbour, a Manchester resident, is the director of the Center of Ecological Sciences for Tetra Tech, which does environmental consulting for, among others, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and various state environmental agencies.
Barbour supervises about 35 employees, who, using the Tetra Tech lab facilities, process biological samples and perform toxicity testing to measure water quality in locations as diverse as Mississippi and Thailand.
But what Barbour is really known for - internationally known for - is something called RBPs, or Rapid Bioassessment Protocols of Streams and Wadeable Rivers, which he created in 1989 and updated 10 years later for the EPA.
Rapid Bioassessment was something of a revolution in water quality testing in the late 1980s. Before then, most water quality was analyzed chemically, measuring the level of toxicants in the water. But, Barbour realized, this ignored the physical health of the stream or river: the effect of erosion or sedimentation from nearby development; the health of the riparian zone, the wooded area surrounding a stream.
Besides also observing the physical health of a stream, Barbour realized that the best way to test water quality was to look at the organisms living in that water. By doing a fairly quick survey of the organisms living in a stream, one could get a good idea of its general health.
The technique has made him fairly well-known in scientific circles. He spends a lot of time traveling to different states and Indian reservations (which must do their own water quality monitoring) to show agencies how to use the technique in their unique environments. Barbour has also traveled around the world and done consulting for Austria, Spain and Great Britain.
In the course of his career, Barbour has written a number of scientific papers. But writing novels, he found, was an entirely different proposition.
"It's quite a difference to change from writing scientific papers to writing novels," said Barbour, who went through many drafts of his first novel and struggled with the more literary elements of writing: narrator point of view and character voice.
His debut novel took four years to write, but now Barbour is on the fast track having signed with Rebel to write five more books in eight years. His next book takes place in Hawaii, concerns the bleaching of the coral reefs, and once again features Chad Gunning.
"It began as a hobby. Now I'm committed to a second career," said Barbour, who, planning to demonstrate Rapid Bioassessment in the stream near his office, was dressed in hiking boots, water-resistant pants and a water-resistant, yellow button-down shirt.
Barbour was motivated to write fiction to reach a larger audience about environmental issues, an audience he couldn't reach through his specialized scientific papers.
Scientists, he said, haven't traditionally been very successful at communicating with the public.
"We make it so complicated, people haven't been able to understand it," said Barbour. "We get too technical. We aren't good at putting things into sound bites."
His books, Barbour said, will always contain two elements: First, an environmental issue that's real, and second, a geographical location that's accurate, culled from Barbour's own travels.
That's the science. For entertainment, there's Chad Gunnings, an Indiana Jones figure who instead of hopping the globe searching for ancient treasures hops the globe investigating environmental evildoers.
Barbour's novels are part mystery, part James Bond thriller and part science lesson.
In "The Kenai Catastrophe,"Gunnings is sent to Alaska's Kenai Peninsula to investigate a decrease in the area's salmon population, during which time he uncovers a vast conspiracy that might involve a state congressman, the logging industry, a native American tribe and a 100-year-old massacre in an Indian village.
Barbour admitted that Gunnings' adventures are more fraught with danger than his own. But Barbour has been in some close situations as well.
He said, "I've certainly had my share of adventure," which have included being attacked by fire ants in South Carolina and alligators in Florida; having a gun pulled on him by striking workers in Birmingham, Ala.; and diving into the Missouri River in winter in fast-moving water.
"I think that's when I questioned my career choice," said Barbour.
One of the sequences in the book involves a grizzly bear attack, a threat so real in Alaska that Barbour once took a .44 Magnum with him on a field expedition there. He had heard that firing the gun in the air might scare off an attacking bear. His guide suggested otherwise. If a bear attacks, he said, "you shoot that darn thing."
Fortunately, Barbour didn't have a run-in with a bear. His characters aren't so lucky.
"My adventures have been fairly mild compared to what I'm trying to bring out in the book," said Barbour.
There's another difference between Barbour and his action hero alter ego. Barbour is happily married, while Gunnings is a bachelor with a few romantic indiscretions, a characteristic that required some explaining.
"[My wife] recognized my character, but wanted to know who those other characters were," he said. "I had to convince her that was all fiction."
THE TOWN CRIER
Former resident, biologist plans local book-signing
Dr. Michael T Barbour, former Stockbridge resident, will conduct a book signing for his recently published book Monday, December 23, 10 a.m. until noon at The Town Crier office. He is the son of Walt and Lois Barbour, Stockbkridge.
Barbour is the Director of the Center for Ecological Sciences for Tetra Tech, Inc., in Maryland. Tetra Tech is an environmental consulting firm for the US Environmental Protection Agency.
A 1965 graduate of Stockbridge High School, the aquatic biologist spends much of his time traipsing around streams across the country, estimating the water quality.
Throughout Barbour's work throughout the 50 states, perhaps the most memorable was his time spent in Alaska. His passion for protecting untouched wilderness was reinforced after spending time conducting biological surveys in the Kenai Peninsula. After seeing the extensive impact from human activities in watersheds, he believed that better informed decisions influenced by an educated public was needed to instill actions that delayed or postponed similar alterations in watersheds of Alaska.
What resulted was a book, four years in the writing, The Kenai Catastrophe. The novel highlights the intricate balance of nature and human encroachment upon the salmon and native Americans in an action-filled drama.
He and his wife, Sue (McKim), also from Stockbridge, have two boys, Brent and Kurt.