A Light In The Black Triangle

Like the classical composers he loves, Josef Krecek is a master of instrumentation. But rather than orchestrating strings, brass and woodwinds, he brings together rain and fog gauges, pH meters, fish counters and other environmental-monitoring devices. And instead of sublime symphonies, the 53-year-old Czech hydrologist's instruments have produced disturbing evidence of disharmony — the vast devastation wrought by Soviet-era industrial air pollution, acid-rain deposits and poor commercial forestry practices in the Jizera Mountains of northern Bohemia. The range , which runs along the Czech Republic's border with Poland, forms part of the infamous Black Triangle, a 32,000-sq-km area where the two...