Towards a Science of Sustainability: Conference to be held Fall 2009 at Warrenton, VA

实现人类可持续未来的挑战是当今社会面临的最重要的挑战之一。要了解人类与环境系统之间复杂和动态的相互联系，并利用这种知识为有效的管理和政策制定提供信息，将需要越来越强大的量化工具，以气候系统、生态系统和社会经济系统的建模、预测和分析的现有方法为基础，但也要大大扩展。为了应对这些挑战，组织者将在2009年冬季举办一次研讨会，将来自广泛学科的科学家和从业人员聚集在一起，以确定关键的开放研究问题，这些问题的解决将使该领域在量子水平上取得进展。我们希望，这次研讨会的成果将有助于指导为可持续性研究提供资金的优先事项。

The challenges of achieving a sustainable future for humanity are among the most crucial facing society today. To understand the complex and dynamic interconnections among human and environmental systems, and to mobilize that knowledge to inform effective management and policy making, will require increasingly powerful quantitative tools, building upon but expanding dramatically the approaches available for modeling, prediction and analysis of climate systems, ecosystems and socio-economic systems. To address these challenges, the organizers will hold a workshop in Winter 2009 to bring together scientists and practitioners from across a broad spectrum of disciplines, to identify crucial open research questions whose solution would advance the field by quantum levels. Our hope is that the products of this workshop will help guide priorities for funding of research on sustainability.