RCN: Drought Impacts on Regional Ecosystems Network (DIREnet): Coordinating Studies on Southwest Forests & Woodlands.

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The Drought Impacts on Regional Ecosystems Network (DIREnet) will promote the coordination and synthesis of ecological research on drought effects and the potential role of global climate change. A severe regional drought in the last nine years has rapidly and dramatically altered Southwest forest and woodland ecosystems. DIREnet will promote and integrate research needed to address key questions that can only be addressed with a regional network. DIREnet will bring researchers and land managers together to assess the impacts of the drought through conferences that will foster new research and synthesize existing research. A student researcher exchange program will promote novel research opportunities, and facilitate technology transfer. A sophisticated online forum (Southwest Ecological Research Forum [SERF]) will serve as a globally accessible data clearinghouse, providing advanced analysis and visualization and a forum for scientific discussion and communication. In combination, these efforts will greatly promote our understanding of how droughts impact major ecosystems, including altered fire regimes and habitat degradation, and how climate change scenarios may alter drought dynamics in the future. Outreach to Native Americans and the general public will help improve natural resource use planning and policy development. DIREnet will provide a model for network technologies that are needed to bring together interdisciplinary, geographically-distributed scientific communities in a common research effort focused on addressing broad research issues.