Scientific Capacity Building for Global Change Research

American Geophysical Union, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The global change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START) will facilitate and support collaborative regional research networks that engage developing country scientists in investigating critical issues of global environmental change in an integrated, multi-disciplinary manner. In addition, START will develop and coordinate activities that enhance dissemination of accumulated knowledge and expertise in innovative ways and that foster new avenues for international collaborative research, partnership and exchange. They will assign priority to interactions between coupled human and natural systems and application of science to ecosystem management and decision-making. Support will be given in the form of competitive sub-awards through annual calls for proposals that will give priority to proposals from multi-disciplinary teams that investigate critical regional environmental change issues, as articulated in science plans for Africa and for the Asia-Pacific region. START will also, in collaboration with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), support a workshop involving scientists and other stakeholders from across Africa to refine the AfricanNESS science plan, especially strategies for designing and conducting regional integrated studies of global environmental change in Africa. Primary projected outcomes are expected to include: a direct contribution to global change science and change detection; enhanced understanding of regional impacts and consequences of global change; improved ability to use such information for planning and decision-making in developing countries; and an improved and expanded group of scientists in Africa and Asia-Pacific who partner with scientists in the United States, Japan, and other developed countries and who are being integrated into international global change research networks.