"For the 2002 centennial, Carnegie trustees decided to invest in a new department,'' says Chris Field, interim director of the new department."Our goal is to do basic science that takes advantage of dramatically powerful new ecological tools, which can help us understand what's happening to the Earth on a continental and global scale."

Stanford University has given permission to Carnegie to construct a multi-million dollar, 10,000-sf facility on the seven-acre site it currently leases from the university. Carnegie plans to have a staff of 35 and five faculty members by its 2003 opening.

Some of Carnegie's other research centers include Embryology in Baltimore; Terrestrial Magnetism and the Geophysical Laboratory in Washington; the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena; and the Department of Plant Biology in Stanford.