Workshop: Variable Atmosphere Laboratory (VAL) Workshop 2; Arlington, VA; May 2009

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Key uncertainties remain in understanding the effects of atmospheric and climatic change on ecosystems and health. Predicting the responses of the earth and biological systems to rising temperatures and the complex mixture of increasing gases (carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide) is challenging as it is difficult to control these multiple parameters and create replicated experiments, especially on a scale large enough to study biological communities. How elevations in trace gases will affect the capacity of communities to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is unknown. Changes in atmospheric composition over geologic time have been hypothesized to drive major evolutionary changes, but these hypotheses are difficult to evaluate without experimental tests of atmospheric composition on organisms. Air pollutants have been implicated in the dramatic recent elevations in respiratory diseases like asthma, but facilities for experimentally testing the effect of atmospheric composition are insufficient. This award, jointly funded by the National Science Foundation's BIO and GEO directorates, will support a workshop to discuss the design and implementation of a national facility to study the effects of atmospheric composition and climate on biological and earth processes. The workshop participants constitute a diverse group of scientists in terms of scientific expertise, gender, geographic origin, ethnicity, and career stages. In addition, representatives from a variety of potential federal funding agencies will attend the workshop.