Scientific Integration and Coordination Activities of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme

International Geosphere, Stockholm

Investigators

Abstract

The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), organized under the auspices of the International Council for Science recently completed a synthesis of its first decade of research and is embarking on its second decade with a broader, and even more integrative research agenda. The overall goal of this effort is to study interactions between biological, chemical and physical processes, and human systems. This effort will be conducted through eight core projects focused on the three major Earth System compartments (land, ocean and atmosphere), the three interfaces between these compartments, and two projects dealing with systems-level integration from the past through the present and into the future. The IGBP will be coordinated by a scientific committee supported by the IGBP Secretariat. These coordination and integration activities will be aimed at facilitating the Earth System Science focus of the IGBP network by a) affecting efficient and comprehensive communication between the IGBP core projects and providing the Earth System context for the these projects; b) collaborating with its international partner programmes in the transdisciplinary Earth System Science Partnership to address wider issues of sustainability science and put IGBP results in the global change context; c) communicating the results of IGBP investigations into global environmental change in an understandable way to the wider scientific community, the education sector, agencies and other stakeholder organizations, and the public. This integration will involve careful planning: identifying systems-level hypotheses and questions, constructing research infrastructure to address them, and ensuring that the efforts of the IGBP core projects are carried out in a synergistic manner. This will enable scientists from the natural and related social sciences and from more than eighty countries to collaborate in an efficient and focused manner to advance, not only their disciplinary fields, but, more importantly, address systems-level global environmental change issues. The IGBP will also continue to develop new ways of communicating the results of its research to stakeholders outside the science community.