Workshop on Ecosystem Impacts of Geoengineering in San Diego, CA; Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2011

这笔赠款提供资金支持一个关于地球工程对水生和陆地生态系统潜在影响的讲习班。地球工程指的是为抵消人为排放温室气体造成的全球变暖而提出的技术。例如，通常讨论的“太阳辐射管理”技术涉及向平流层注入反射气溶胶以冷却地球。许多提出的地球工程方案可能会对我们星球上的生态系统产生重要而未知的影响。这些后果是由区域气候有意或无意的变化造成的，这些变化以影响敏感物种的方式发生。然而，地球工程研究和生态系统研究社区只有很小的重叠，通过让生态系统专家参与预测地球工程方案的潜在危害，加强研究互动将有利于每个社区，以及整个社会。本次研讨会将两个社区聚集在一起，以解决四个目标：(1)建立生态系统研究和地球工程研究社区之间的联系；(2)评估影响地球工程对生态系统潜在影响的科学不确定性；(3)让生态系统研究人员了解当前的地球工程研究；(4)为地球工程研究人员提供关于地球工程潜在生态系统危害的反馈。研讨会的第一天将进行公开讲座，其余两天将撰写一份关于地球工程对生态系统影响的综合报告。综合报告将提交给国际地圈-生物圈方案（IGBP），该方案为讲习班提供部分支助。研讨会的科学知识价值和更广泛的影响是密切相关的。从科学上讲，地球工程对我们对气候系统和全球生态系统的理解提出了挑战。在实践层面上，地球工程已经被提出作为对全球变暖威胁的回应，更好地理解地球工程的后果将是考虑实施地球工程方案的决策者的宝贵投入。

This grant provides funds to support a workshop on the potential impacts of geoengineering on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Geoengineering refers to techniques proposed to counteract the global warming produced by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. For example, a commonly discussed "solar radiation management" technique involves the injection of reflective aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the earth. Many proposed geoengineering schemes may have important and unexplored consequences to the ecosystems that populate our planet. These consequences result from intentional and unintentional changes to regional climates in ways that affect sensitive species. However, the geoengineering-research and ecosystem-research communities have only minor overlaps, and it would benefit each community, as well as society at large, to strengthen research interactions by involving ecosystem experts in predicting the potential hazards of geoengineering schemes. This workshop brings the two communities together to address four objectives: (1) to build connections between the ecosystem research and geoengineering-research communities, (2) to evaluate scientific uncertainties that affect the potential impacts of geoengineering on ecosystems, (3) to expose ecosystem researchers to current geoengineering research, and (4) to generate feedback for geoengineering researchers on potential ecosystem hazards of geoengineering. The first day of the workshop will be devoted to public lectures, and the remaining two days will be used to write a synthesis report on the topic of ecosystem impacts of geoengineering. The synthesis report will be presented to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which is providing partial support for the workshop.The scientific intellectual merit and broader impacts of the workshop are closely connected. Scientifically, geoengineering poses a challenge to our understanding of the climate system and the global ecosystem. On a practical level,geoengineering has been proposed as a response to the threat posed by global warming, and a better understanding of the consequences of geoengineering would be a valuable input to decision makers considering the implementation of geoengineering schemes.