Joint German-American Conference on Land Use and Climate Change

尽管气候变化的影响起源于全球，但各地区之间的差异很大。因此，应对这些变化需要以国际协调的方式采取地方行动，承认区域和地方影响的不平等。人们越来越认识到，需要一系列缓解办法，地方区域可以利用这些办法制定有效的战略，减少能源消耗和二氧化碳排放，提高能源利用效率，并储存消耗的碳，使能源生产可持续。此外，各组织、社区和区域需要确定机会，以减少其对气候变化影响的脆弱性，并提高其适应气候变化的土地利用和生计战略的能力。在这种背景下，生物圈、土壤和水等土地资源及其与人和气候系统的相互作用发挥着越来越重要的作用。尽管土地资源的面积有限，但它是全球碳循环的重要组成部分，可用于生产可再生能源和封存碳。然而，这一潜力受到现有土地资源需求的限制，这些资源用于提供人类住区、粮食和纤维生产以及其他生态系统服务，如维持水质。为了解决这些问题并汇聚美国和德国科学家的互补专业知识，该奖项将支持美国科学家参加一个关于在不断变化的气候下理解和管理土地利用动态的挑战的两国会议。会议将于2008年10月初在德国柏林举行。来自美国的35名学者和来自德国的约100名学者将聚集在一起，讨论与气候变化有关的土地变化科学的最新发展，确定研究的优先事项，为年轻学者的参与提供机会，并发展美国和德国科学家之间的新合作。该项目将有助于更好地科学理解面临气候变化的人与土地资源之间的复杂相互作用。它将促进美国和德国学者之间的国际合作。由于大约一半的美国参与者将处于职业生涯的早期阶段，未来国际合作发现的长期潜力尤其巨大。该项目还将促进对土地资源和气候变化之间复杂动态的了解，从而促进制定更有效的战略，以减轻和适应气候变化在一系列不同陆地环境中的影响。

Although global in origin, climate-change impacts vary strongly across regions. Coping with these changes therefore requires local action in an internationally coordinated way that acknowledges inequities in impacts regionally and locally. Awareness is growing of the need for a portfolio of mitigation options that local regions can use to develop effective strategies for reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, to increase the efficiency of energy use, and to store consumed carbon and make energy production sustainable. Furthermore, organizations, communities, and regions need to identify opportunities to reduce their vulnerability to climate-change impacts and increase their capacity to adapt their land-use and livelihood strategies to the changing climate. In this context, land resources like the biosphere, soils, and water and their interaction with people and the climate system play an increasingly important role. Although limited in its areal extent, land resources are an important component of the global carbon cycle, and they can be used to produce renewable energy and to sequester carbon. This potential, however, is constrained by existing demands on land resources to provide for human settlement, food and fiber production, and other ecosystem services like maintenance of water quality. To address these topics and bring together the complementary expertise of U.S. and German scientists, this award will support the participation of U.S. scientists in a binational conference on the challenges of understanding and managing land-use dynamics under a changing climate. The conference is to be held in Berlin, Germany, in early October 2008. The conference will bring together 35 scholars from United States with about 100 from Germany to discuss the current state of the art in land-change science as it relates to climate change, to identify priorities for research, to provide opportunities for participation of young scholars, and to develop new collaborations between U.S. and Germany-based scientists.This project will help facilitate greater scientific understanding of the complex interactions among people and land resources in the face of climatic change. It will facilitate international collaboration between U.S. and German scholars. Because roughly half of the U.S. participants will be at early stages in their professional careers, the long-term potential for future international collaborative findings is especially great. The project also will advance understanding of the complex dynamics between land resources and climate change, thereby fostering more effective strategies for mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change in a range of different terrestrial environments.