Collaborative Research: Core Support for Future Earth International Global Change Research

George Mason University, Fairfax VA

Investigators

Abstract

This project supports the US Secretariat of Future Earth. Future Earth harnesses the insights and capacity of the global scientific community to address global problems, like a warming and increasingly unstable climate, and a rapid loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The Future Earth effort is based on the recognition that modern global change challenges require coordinated research efforts bringing together the world's best researchers in the natural, social, behavioral, and engineering sciences, and connecting these researchers with the needs and capacities embedded within a wide range of stakeholder institutions and communities. The Secretariat leads and co-leads core functions that include research enabling, networks and capacity, information technology, and communications. In addition, the US Global Hub leads the evolution and growth of Future Earth’s global efforts and directs many of Future Earth’s core global initiatives, including a flagship capacity building program, communications products, and collaborative data-platforms. Future Earth provides a critical service to the science community by advancing global change science in the US and around the world, and by supporting the full range of research modalities from fundamental disciplinary research to transdisciplinary research. By connecting research across geography and discipline, the project supports the emergence of novel, integrative scientific ideas. By elevating the spread and impact of scientific results and connecting these results with constituencies in business, government, and civil society, Future Earth’s work supports decision making around the world. It also connects US researchers with a vast and rapidly growing network of leading international scholars in global change research and provides direct access to new knowledge and initiatives. This work includes a broad range of communication capacities in the US and around the world, like the establishment of the Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress, the first global convening that brings the global change research and innovation communities together, on an annual basis. The Future Earth US Global Hub has also established partnerships to build and diversify the next generation of global change researchers through an internship program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.