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Appropriate Balance
Does the USGCRP Strike an Appropriate Balance?
A particular question, often asked, was whether the FY 1991 program
reflects an appropriate balance between initial investments in long-lead
time, space-based efforts (specifically the new research initiatives of the
Earth Observing System and the Earth Probes series of smaller spacecraft)
and investments in more immediate and often less expensive research needs.
In considering this particular and other more general questions we
need first to define "appropriate balance" (one in which resources are
allocated to program components in a manner that will best achieve overall
program goals) and then, using this standard, to weigh the program in
several ways. Six ways of evaluating balance are discussed below, followed
by a set of overall conclusions.
BALANCE BETWEEN LONG-TERM AND
SEIORT-TERM INVESTMENTS
The USGCRP, envisaged as an effort that will span several decades,
requires early investment in a number of essential program elements that
by their nature require long-lead times. These long-term efforts must be
balanced against those that can be immediately set in motion and that may
yield results over a shorter term.
The most obvious of the long-lead items involve spacecraft, and it is
in this area that the FY 1991 program puts much of its budget. It is the
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view of the panel that this is both prudent and unavoidable, given that
continuous, long-term, space-based measurements of fundamental earth
parameters are essential to achieving the underlying goals of the USGCRP.
Space-based instruments and operations are of necessity expensive. Thus
it should be expected that the USGCRP must invest substantially, early in
the program, in long-lead, space-based capabilities. Part II of this report
examines more specific issues regarding the EOS and Earth Probe systems.
1b realize the potential of this investment, it is necessary that it be
balanced by an appropriate investment in the broader needs of the program,
including human resources and the infrastructure of basic research that is
needed to use the data that will be acquired from space. It is the opinion
of the panel that this will require, in future years, a heavier commitment
to shorter-term investments and to long-term non-space-based efforts than
the committment included in the FY 1991 plan.
Examples of research activities carrying the promise of shorter term
payoffs that should be strengthened and supported include some currently
planned space missions such as TOPEX, existing programs that will con-
tribute to the USGCRP, efforts in data collection and assimilation, and
current efforts to model the earth system.
Included in the long-lead, long-term investments that do not involve
space are investments in education, to establish a pool of human resources
adequate to address both the scientific and technical aspects of global
change issues, and a strengthening of basic research into the processes
involved in global change, in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary ar-
eas. Both of these long-lead elements can only be addressed with full
involvement of the academic community.
BALANCE BETWEEN EXTRAMURAL AND
AGENCY-BASED RESEARCH
All the scientists who were consulted in the process of the panel's
review expressed strong support for the USGCRP. Many, however, were
concerned that the USGCRP-defined as it is by the CEES through agency
initiatives might appropriate the more critical elements of the program to
create intramural endeavors, or to fund existing initiatives in the name of
USGCRP. If in-house, agency research endeavors were allowed to dominate,
the program would almost certainly lose the active support and involvement
of those academic scientists who have provided the ideas on which the
program is based and whose contributions have traditionally defined the
cutting edge of research.
There are several reasons why the strengths of the academic commu-
nity need to be more be fully used in the USGCRP. Most importantly,
the USGCRP will require trained scientists in emerging areas of program
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focus, in most cases more scientists than currently exist. The needed recruit-
ment and education can best be carried out within a university community
that is involved in global change research and adequately supported to
carry it out, and when students perceive that there is a national commit-
ment to continued global change research. Other elements of the research
community federal laboratories, centers, and industry-complement the
universities by providing supplemental training, but they are not well suited
to educating large numbers of advanced students. Researchers in the aca-
demic community will also make strong intellectual contributions in many
of the scientific fields that must grow and adapt to new problems of global
change.
The materials available to the panel were not adequate to allow an
assessment of the balance in funding in the FY 1991 program between
in-house, agency initiatives and funding for extramural research. The
concerns outlined above could be alleviated, however, were each agency
involved in the USGCRP to establish an extramural research program
coordinated with its in-house research endeavors. In addition, it would
facilitate program review if each agency were to provide a breakdown of
its entire USGCRP program contribution showing proposed distribution
between extramural and in-house efforts. What constitutes an "appropriate
balance" will obviously differ among agencies because of their different
missions. The panel recommends that the two steps just described be
adopted in the development of future budgets for the program.
BALANCE BEIWEEN "BIG" AND "LITTLE" SCIENCE
The needs of global change research require that a balance be main-
tained between large organized projects and research carried out by indi-
viduals or team investigators. By definition, much research in the science of
global change requires global data sets and large-scale analyses, involving
coordination and instruments that are obtainable only through organized
national and international programs of research. At the same time, much
of the "little" science that is carried out today by investigators or teams is
made possible by data acquired through "big science" efforts, such as the
World Climate Research Program. Needed is an appropriate balance of
the two.
Innovative research by individual investigators has traditionally defined
the forefront of scientific discovery, and it is clearly requisite to the success
of the USGCRP. This capability can best be advanced by (1) identifying
within each science priority element adequate extramural funding for re-
search, as recommended above; (2) involving the extramural community in
programmatic review at a variety of levels (both agency and cross-agency);
(3) maintaining sufficient flexibility in the program to make possible the
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support of innovative individual research; and (4) maintaining a program
focus that is intellectually challenging so as to attract the most able scien-
tists, whether they work independently or through organized activities.
In the opinion of the panel, the FY 1991 USGCRP plans would be
strengthened if areas (1) and (2) above were more clearly supported.
BALANCE AMONG OBSERVATIONS,
PROCESS STUDIES, AND MODELING
The USGCRP comprises three fundamental elements: observations to
provide global, long-term data sets for detecting change, focused studies to
improve understanding of fundamental earth system processes, and analyt-
ical modeling to develop the ability to predict future changes. The three
are interactive and interdependent and must be developed in parallel. Pro-
cess studies to improve understanding of global change and observational
activities often proceed interactively. The results from the process studies
and observations furnish information for model building, and the results of
the models results often stimulate new process studies and observations.
As noted earlier, investment in observational systems dominates the
proposed budget for reasons that seem necessary to the panel. The mission
of the program requires a combination of space- and ground-based observa-
tions to provide global, long-term data sets for detecting change. Although
the EOS and Earth Probes include support for associated, ground-based
activities, they clearly do not address all program needs for in situ data.
Many of the data sets for the USGCRP will have to be secured on or near
the surface. It will be necessary that the program include needs for in
situ data and the complementarily of space-based and in situ observational
programs more explicitly than in the FY 1991 program.
In succeeding years of the USGCRP, the two other fundamental ele-
ments of the program- process studies and modeling must be emphasized
more strongly. Process studies constitute the intellectual driving force of
the program. The support for research dealing with process studies, partic-
ularly studies that address issues that cut across the seven USGCRP science
elements, needs to be strengthened in future years.
Although acknowledged in earlier USGCRP documents as the ultimate
goal of the program, support for the conceptual efforts needed in modeling
is notably lacking in the FY 1991 plan. Two gaps now exist in the modeling
aspects of the program: (1) a specification of what the program requires
in the way of a national earth system modeling capability, including but
extending beyond improved climate system modeling, with an interagency
plan that will support it; and (2) a workable plan for interpreting and
delivering the results in a form useful to policymakers. It is not too soon to
focus on requirements for the first of these given the lead times required
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to build multi-disciplinary groups of modelers and any new institutions that
may be required. How these central issues will be met will need to be
addressed in future descriptions of the USGCRP, through a comprehensive
national plan, including the role of EOSDIS in modeling efforts.
BAIANCE BEIWEEN ESTABLISHED AND EMERGING PROGRAMS
The research needed to address issues of global change, as defined
nationally by the NRC and the CEES and internationally by ICSU and
the WMO, rests on the foundation of a number of contributing programs
of research that are already in motion. Among these are the program
on International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC), the Joint Global
Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), and elements of the World Climate Research
Program (WCRP), including the World Ocean Circulation Experiment
(WOCE), Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA), and the Global
Energy and Water Experiment (GEWEX). Plans for these programs have
been developed over a number of years and represent the consensus of
the scientific community involved in global change. Given the current
atmosphere of interest in global change, however, it is a great deal easier
to invent new programs than to support them once they are established.
There is a concern that these necessary, existing programs will suffer as
new projects are defined.
It would be counterproductive if new elements of the USGCRP were
to be initiated at the expense of the established programs on which progress
of the overall program depends. A related hazard, given the array of new
and existing program elements, is that of underfunding, in the sense of
support below the level needed to sustain progress. As cuts are weighed
in the overall USGCRP budget in any year, reductions will need to be
considered in light of the highest priority needs of the program as a whole.
It would be damaging, in the view of the panel, if a potential need to
reduce budgets were to be spread evenly over all elements of the program.
This element of balance can be addressed directly if the support for
contributing programs is made an explicit element of future budgets for
the USGCRP.
BAIANCE AMONG SCIENCE PRIORITIES
The USGCRP identifies seven science priorities, gives them relative
rank, and further identifies priority tasks within each of them. The panel
concludes that the priorities are generally consistent with the goals and
initial aims of- the program and with the recommendations of the CGC. A
further measure is how well the funding proposed in the FY 1991 budget
conforms to the adopted priorities. In Appendix B. we briefly assess how
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each of the CEES science priorities and the underlying needs of Modeling,
Data and Information Systems, and Documenting Change are treated in
the FY 1991 budget.
As noted in Appendix B. the panel finds both the program definition
and the level of support for the USGCRP science element concerning "hu-
man interactions" notably deficient when balanced with the other elements
of the program.
PRINCIPAL RECOMMENDATIONS
The panel recommends that, in preparing future versions of the plan,
CEES explicitly consider the above six dimensions of scientific balance for
the program as discussed in this chapter, and that these dimensions be
employed as explicit criteria in program evaluation. The involvement of
the extramural scientific community in the process through advisory and
review mechanisms seems essential to this purpose.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
change research
