This work centers on a three-day workshop to assess the state of knowledge in understanding and predicting land-surface responses to climate and land-use changes. The activity responds directly to major themes in a 2010 NRC report (Landscapes on the Edge), as well as calls for action among participants at a well-attended AGU townhall meeting in 2011. The geomorphic community has developed conceptual and mathematical models for how Earth?s surface will respond to and feed back on changes in climate and land use. However, the current state of knowledge in predicting land-surface response to climate and land-use changes has not been synthesized and documented in one place.
The workshop will involve web-based community engagement during its preparatory stages, and bring 20-25 participants to Biosphere 2 near Tucson, AZ, in May, 2013 to synthesize the community input and produce a journal paper on the state of the science plus a separate white paper on strategies for filling knowledge gaps. Two goals of the workshop are to (1) assess and summarize the state of knowledge in predicting land-surface response to climate and land-use changes, and (2) devise a strategy for filling knowledge gaps that leverages the talent and resources of the community of land surface scientists. Through this baseline assessment, the meeting aims to lay the foundations for planning a follow-on meeting co-designed by geomorphologists, hydrologists, soil scientists, ecologists, atmospheric scientists, and others to synthesize knowledge and discuss how predictive models can incorporate knowledge from all relevant disciplines.
Scientists have developed state-of-the-art models for forecasting the likely behavior of Earth's atmosphere and oceans out to approximately a century into the future. We have a relatively limited ability to forecast how Earth's surface (i.e. rivers, coastlines, desert dust emissions, etc.) will respond to likely future climatic and land-use changes, however, despite the fact that it is on Earth's surfave where people live and where hazards to people and infrastructure are greatest. In this project we assembled 30 experts for a workshop designed to assess the ability of the Earth surface science community to predict changes to Earth's land surface and to chart a path forward for closing the knowledge gaps that exist.The broader scientific community was engaged via a wiki page and a report in EOS, a leading scientific newletter. The intellectual merit of the project was its expert assessment of what is known and not known about how Earth's surface will respond to future climatic and land-use changes. The broader impact is primarily that this assessment will stimulate collaborations with related disciplines over the next few years to stimulate new approaches to solving the hardest problems in Earth surface prediction/forecasting. The key outcome of the workshop and follow-on activities was a comprehensive report on the state-of-the-art in forecasting Earth surface response to climatic and land-use changes. This paper will be disseminated through an open-access journal once the review process is completed (early 2015).
