Research at Multiple Scales: A Vision for Continental Scale Biology

生物科学基础设施、技术和文化以及相关数据和信息科学的最新进展为我们提供了开始完善有关生命系统如何运作的小规模和大规模理解的工具。此外，这些研究强调了理解微观尺度和宏观（或大陆）尺度研究如何洞察生活世界的重要性，但这些多个过程如何相互作用仍不清楚。这项研究将探讨问题，并建议研究结构，可以指导生物学研究在这一范围内的规模，以告知我们对生命系统的关系和相互依赖性的理解。在该奖项的支持下，美国国家科学院、工程院和医学生命科学委员会（NASEM）将进行一项共识研究，以确定多尺度的生物学研究如何为大陆尺度生物学的发展提供信息。委员会将召开一系列虚拟社区研讨会，为其审议提供信息。该委员会将确定和讨论已成功地用于将知识，方法和工具从小规模生物研究转化为区域和大陆规模，反之亦然的做法;阻碍采用这些做法的挑战;以及可以作为试点的具体研究问题，以实施整合一个或多个成功做法的研究项目。这些讨论的结果将包括一个程序，这将是同行评审，并通过既定的NASEM流程发布。解决与气候和生物多样性变化相关的关键科学和社会挑战需要一个趋同的战略，建立在我们对多尺度过程如何告知和约束大陆尺度关键过程的理解之上。在我们理解大陆尺度上的这些变化以及自上而下和自下而上的过程如何控制大陆尺度上发生的动态方面，存在着一个关键的差距。目前缺乏的是了解这些努力如何能够有助于更全面地了解应对迅速出现的生物多样性和气候变化的必要性。该奖项支持的评估和综合活动旨在明确提供大陆尺度生物学的愿景，利用最新的文化，技术和基础设施进步来解决新出现的基本问题，并帮助应对生物多样性的全球挑战和应对环境变化的许多来源的影响。NASEM发表了几份报告，描述了国家的环境和生物多样性挑战，这些报告将为讨论和项目成果提供信息。该报告的目标是帮助NSF，其他资助组织，和生物科学界在确定发展大陆-规模生物学和策略，以促进生物学在结构和功能尺度上的统一。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查的搜索.

Recent advances in biological science infrastructure, technology, and culture and associated data and information science have given us the tools to begin to refine small and large-scale understanding about how living systems function. Furthermore, these studies highlight the importance of understanding how micro-scale and macro (or continental) scale studies give insights to the living world but how these multiple processes interact remains unclear. This study will explore questions and recommend research structures that can guide biological research across this range of scales to inform our understanding of the relationships and interdependencies of living systems. With support from this award, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on Life Sciences (NASEM) will conduct a consensus study to identify how biological research at multiple scales can inform the development of a continental scale biology. The committee will convene a series of virtual community workshops to inform its deliberations. The committee will identify and discuss practices that have been used successfully to translate knowledge, approaches, and tools from small-scale biological research to regional- and continental-scale, and vice versa; challenges that prevent uptake of these practices; and specific research questions that could serve as pilots for implementing research projects that integrate one or more successful practices. The outcomes from these discussions will be include a proceedings, which will be peer reviewed and published through the established NASEM processes.Addressing critical scientific and societal challenges related to climate and biodiversity changes requires a convergent strategy that builds on our understanding of how processes at multiple scales inform and constrain critical processes at continental scales. A critical gap exists in our ability to understand these changes at continental scales and how both top down and bottom-up processes control the dynamics occurring at continental scales. What is lacking is an understanding of how these efforts can contribute to a more wholistic understanding necessary to address rapidly emerging biodiversity and climate changes. The assessment and synthesis activities supported by this award are designed explicitly to provide a vision for continental-scale biology that takes advantage of recent cultural, technological, and infrastructural advances to address the emergence of new fundamental questions and help respond to global challenges to biodiversity and coping with the impacts of the many sources of environmental change. NASEM has published several reports describing the Nation’s environmental and biodiversity challenges which will inform discussions and the project outcomes. The goal for the report is to assist NSF, other funding organizations, and the biological science community in identifying productive routes for the development of continental-scale biology and strategies to facilitate the concomitant reunification of biology across structural and functional scales.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.