Toward an Understanding of Global Change Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program (1988) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
Pages 5-10
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From page 5... ...
The scientific community is thus urgently challenged with provicling to decision makers the best possible assessments of the future course of the global environment, assessments on which policies to mitigate and adapt to these changes can be based. Over the past decade, efforts to translate the agenda of environmental problems perceived by the public into a scientific agenda of clearly posed, tractable, and prioritized research problems have led to a unifying seminal insight: We cannot hope to understand fully or to predict meaningfully the course of any single Tong-term environmental change 5
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From page 6... ...
national effort in the study of global change has evolved based on the conceptual foundation of earth system science. This conceptual framework was developed in a multidisciplinary study by the Earth Systems Science Committee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and has been used extensively by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in planning their research programs on global change (ESSC, 1988~.
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From page 7... ...
program on global change centers on the study of the following seven elements identified by the Committee on Earth Sciences of the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology (Committee on Earth Sciences, 1988~: ~ Biogeochemical dynamics to study the sources, sinks, fluxes, and interactions between mobile biogeochemical constituents within the earth system, with a particular focus on water, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and the halogens. ~ Ecological systems and dynamics to study the responses of ecological systems, both marine and terrestrial, to changes in global environmental conditions and the influence of biological communities on the atmospheric, climatic, and oceanic systems.
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From page 8... ...
The success of the program will depend on the ability to document global change through long-term and sustained measurements of key variables in the earth system through an expanded space- and ground-based composite observing system. Modeling global change, a critical element of the program, calls for extended research by interdisciplinary teams employing advanced computational capabilities.
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From page 9... ...
initiatives, based on the internationally defined goals for the IGBP, that wiD contribute significantly both to our national interests and to the IGBP. The proposed initiatives build on the several ongoing national and international programs addressing problems of global change relevant to the IGBP, notably the projects organized under the World Climate Research Program and the U.S.
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From page 10... ...
These papers were prepared in workshops arid consultations organized by the committee, and they discuss research needs from five perspectives on the earth system: climatic and hydrologic systems, biogeochemical dynamics, ecological systems and dynamics, human dimensions of global change, and earth system history arid modeling. These papers provide a more complete indication of the range of issues considered by the committee in reaching its conclusions.
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