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OCR for page 11
Introduction
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is an initia-
tive of the U.S. government aimed at establishing the scientific basis for
national and international policymaldng relating to natural and human-
induced changes in the global earth system. As such, the program calls for
broadly-based research and modeling efforts within academia, government
laboratories, and other research centers as well as observational systems to
supply information on the earth system. The program is broadly constituted
to include the study of the various dynamic and interrelated components of
the earth system, induding the human influences affecting and affected by
global environmental changes. Currently, seven science elements constitute
the framework for the program, each including focused research, modeling,
and observational activities. The seven elements are: physical climate and
hydrological systems, biogeochemical dynamics, ecological systems, Earth
system history, human interactions, solid Earth processes and solar influ-
ences. The Earth Observing System, discussed in Part II of this report, is
one major NASA initiative within the USGCRP.
The USGCRP, formally initiated in FY 1990, is formulated by the
interagency Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES)i
under the Office of Science and Technology Policy's Federal Coordinating
Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology. Within the CEES, the
Working Group on Global Change, composed of representatives of seven
participating agencies, develops plans for the program and coordinates these
plans among the agencies. Separate worldng groups concerning research on
mitigation and adaptation to global change and on groundwater are working
in parallel to the working group on global change under the CEES.
The CEES was known as the Committee on Earth Sciences until the spring of 1990.
11
OCR for page 12
12
The formal initiation of the USGCRP was the result of an evolutionary
process within the scientific community and the federal agencies over the
last decade. In 1983, the National Research Council (NRC) organized
a workshop on the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP)
to consider the major questions for research on the atmosphere, oceans,
lithosphere, biosphere, and solar-terrestrial interactions. The workshop
concluded that a unifying theme for these research areas is the concept
of global change. Subsequently, NRC issued a report in 1986, Global
Change in the Geosphere-Biosphere: Initial Prioniies for an IGBP, defining
a conceptual approach for the study of the interacting components of the
earth system. This approach is reflected in the IGBP, formally initiated
by the International Council of Scientific Unions in 1986, of which the
USGCRP is a major national contributing program. The NRC has since
developed a number of scientific priorities for the study of global change,
as reflected in the 1988 reports Toward an Understanding of Global Change:
Initial Prioniies for US. Conhibuiions to the IGBP and The Twenty-First
Century: Mission to Planet Earth, and the forthcoming report on Research
Strategies for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Within NASA, the
report from a 1982 workshop, Global Change: Impacts on Habitability: A
Scieniifir Basis for Assessment and subsequent reports, most notably the
1988 report Earth System Science: A Program for Global Change, similarly
helped to develop consensus within the scientific community on the needs
for national and international research programs to understand global
change. These reports collectively provide a rigorous assessment of the
state of science and gaps in knowledge needed to improve understanding
of natural and anthropogenic changes in the global environment, and they
form the basis for assessing the federal research plan.
The Panel to Review the FY 1991 USGCRP based its assessment
on the brief description of the FY 1991 plans contained in the January
1990 document Our Changing Planet and brief one page descriptions of
the projects included within each of the science elements for the FY 1991
budget. Because of the lack of detail in these documents, the panel con-
sciously concentrated on general concerns about the USGCRP, rather than
on specific analysis of the projects and plans for FY 1991. The panel
formulated four questions for assessment: Does the program address the
scientific priorities for reducing uncertainties about global environmental
change? Is the USGCRP an appropriately balanced program? Are current
processes of coordination and review adequate? And what other issues
require particular attention in the implementation of the program? The
four questions are addressed in Chapters 1 through 4 respectively. Appen-
dLx B is a commentary on projects in the science priority elements of the
USGCRP.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
science elements
