Global Change and Climate
Program: An Interdisciplinary Scientific Approach
The nature of global change and climate
require the use of a cross-cutting interdisciplinary
scientific approach to address their impacts
and to mitigate adverse effects on agricultural
production and forest and rangeland resources.
The projects focus on measuring and understanding
the processes that shape the physical, chemical,
and biological makeup of land, atmosphere,
and water. The challenges are to understand
the components that form the ecosystems from
the molecular to the global scale and to
understand how these systems are linked and
interact.
The research builds on, supports, and integrates
many disciplines and tools, including geography,
ecology, genomics, soil sciences, conservation
biology, atmospheric and earth sciences,
hydrology, environmental engineering, and
the paleo- and social sciences. The integration
of these tools and disciplines goes beyond
discipline-based inquiry and is fundamental
to the understanding of the climate system,
nutrient cycles, ecosystem functions, and
biodiversity.
The Global Change and Climate Program provides
leadership in dealing with critical issues
faced by agricultural producers and the forestry
industry to maintain natural resources, sustain
productivity and understand the impacts of
agriculture, forest and rangelands on climate.
The program works toward implementing the
strategic plan of the U.S. Climate Change
Science Program, which describes a strategy
for developing knowledge of variability and
change in climate and related and human systems,
and for encouraging the application of this
knowledge. The program aims to address the
issues surrounding climate and global change
as applied to agroecosystems in the following
areas:
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