Recent initiatives to monitor and model the complex relationships between geophysical, biological, and climatic processes throughout the world have emphasized the need to understand how people and human institutions modify and respond to global environmental change. Multi- disciplinary, integrated research on the human dimensions of global environmental change has been slow to develop, however, in part because most social and natural scientists have had little experience in working with scholars from other disciplines on large-scale analyses of complex human and environmental interrelationships. This project will convene a small group of social and natural scientists from throughout the nation for a conference at the University of California at Los Angeles to assess how institutional structures at universities can be altered to facilitate research and teaching on human and natural dimensions of global environmental change. Discussions at the conference will focus on identifying disciplinary and organizational barriers that inhibit cooperative research and teaching. Alternative arrangements for enhancing cooperative work will be proposed and evaluated. A written report about the conference will be prepared for distribution to scholars and administrators not in attendance. This conference will examine an important facet of the process of encouraging and conducting research on a topic of rapidly growing importance from both scholarly and applied perspectives. Publication of the results of this conference will enable the conclusions reached by scholars in attendance to be shared with interested persons elsewhere. As a result, the conference likely will have beneficial impacts on research and teaching on global environmental change throughout the nation.
