Mounting concerns about accelerating global human and environmental change highlight the need for creation of new databases to analyze processes of change and for greater use of extant databases. This award provides partial funding to enable a group of roughly 20 social and natural scientists from Pacific Rim nations to meet in Honolulu in May 1991 to address fundamental issues related to global change data collection, access, and use. The conference will have two general purposes: (1) to specify data needs and the availability of databases to address questions relating to human, natural, and physical dimensions of global change in the Pacific Rim; and (2) to discuss problems dealing with the scholarly use of these data, with special attention given to issues of national sensitivities, proprietary rights, systematic biases, longitudinal extensions, remotely sensed data, and adaptability of data for use in geographic information systems. The primary findings of the conference will be reported in a special article in a major scientific journal. The conference will further understandings of fundamental data needs to examine processes of global change by comprehensively examining a broad range of data needs and related data-use issues for a restricted geographic area. The conference should highlight remaining problems and provide suggestions for future actions by independent scholars and institutions, including government agencies.
