Toward Integrative Science at NCAR: Building Links Between the Climate and Ecosystem Impact Research Communities A proposal to the 2006 NCAR Opportunity Fund

Ecosystems significantly affect societies and nations by providing essential renewable resources and other benefits, including food, fiber, shelter, energy, biodiversity, clean air and water, recycling of elements, and cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic returns, while human activities, in turn, affect ecosystem processes and dynamics. Ecosystems also affect the climate system by exchanging large amounts of energy, momentum, and greenhouse gases with the atmosphere. Global climate change is altering the structure and functioning of ecosystems, which in turn affects availability of ecological resources and benefits, changes the magnitude of some feedbacks between ecosystems and the climate system, and could affect economic systems that depend on ecosystems. A grand challenge problem is to understand and be able to project the potential effects of global climate variability and change on ecosystems, the goods and services ecosystems provide, the drivers and consequences of human responses to ecosystem variability and change, and ecosystem links to the climate system.