The Northeast region (NE) exhibits many of the changes taking place across the Nation's landscapes and watersheds, yet also provides a unique lens through which to assess options for managing large-scale natural resource systems. The region has been transformed through early settlement, deforestation and land clearing to industrialization, urbanization and mega-city growth to post-industrialization. Such human actions will continue and arguably be more difficult to manage under the region's rapidly changing climate. Because atmosphere, land, and aquatic systems are closely linked through the water, energy, and biogeochemical cycles, change to any one of these entities holds the potential for system-wide feedbacks, thresholds, and unintended consequences. The current capacity of scientists to understand human-environment systems over the regional domain and over multi-decades is limited, as are the tools for planners to formulate sound decisions. Funding is provided to build a Northeast Regional Earth System Model (NE-RESM) that improves understanding and capacity to forecast the implications of planning decisions on the region's environment, ecosystem services, energy systems and economy through the 21st century. The model will be used to test whether there are regionally significant consequences of human decisions on environmental systems of the NE, expressed through the action of both natural and engineered human systems that dictate the region's biogeophysical state, ecosystem services, energy and economic output. The proposed research will be a major step forward in developing a capacity to diagnose and understand the state of large, interacting human-natural systems.
Beyond its scientific value, a synthetic understanding of how humans interact with climate and environmental systems across entire regions is of enormous strategic importance both to the US and internationally. The globalization of environmental problems has gained a new sense of urgency in science and public policy circles, and along with a growing recognition that ecosystems services are important to human well-being, it is not difficult to articulate the many benefits of developing a more integrated perspective on large-scale human-environment interactions. This research has the potential to create a product of lasting benefit: a working dialogue to translate new science into better decisions. The professional development goal for the post-doctoral scientists supported on this project is to produce holistic thinkers who are technically competent are prepared to become leaders in the field of interdisciplinary Earth systems science. The project will also provide unique research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, particularly in the area of interdisciplinary research, for which there is now a critical lack of sufficient training.
