Type 2: The Future of Ecosystems and Extremes: Using Diverse Environmental Data Sets in Support of Regional to Global Earth-System Models and Predictions

我国自然和管理的生态系统对公共生活及其可持续未来至关重要。极端气候和天气事件对生态系统生产力构成重大风险，因为这类事件具有最大的破坏性和代价。在环境条件改变的情况下，极端事件的频率、强度和/或持续时间进一步增加，也可能对生态系统造成不可挽回的损害。因此，全面观察、了解、记录和预测生态系统对极端环境条件的反应和恢复能力，以及由于地球自然和人类系统的变化可能在多大程度上越过不可逆转的阈值，至关重要。只有通过在各种环境条件下对生态系统行为的观察证据，才能改善预测模型的性能。目前的一套生态、气象和水文观测与国家下一代国家生态观测网络(NEON)相结合，为实现全面覆盖我国不同类型生态系统的新分析提供了令人兴奋的机会。这项研究利用一系列预测工具进行协调校准、评估、增强和实验，其中包括：代表生态系统实地规模机制的模型；高分辨率区域生态系统-气候模型；以及相连的地球-人类系统的全球综合评估模型。通过这些，将确定受人类改变的天气和气候极端以及土地利用变化控制的生态系统的生产力、响应和弹性的特定区域阈值，这些变化对生态系统服务造成严重影响。对照霓虹灯观测对生态系统模型进行测试和评估将确定准确预测生态系统对极端条件的反应所需的关键模型能力。在本世纪末潜在的气候和环境变化的有利条件下，区域和全球人地系统模型的预测也将允许对生态变化和复原力进行基于风险的评估。这是可能的，通过运行这些模型在合理的人类排放和气候/生态反应的范围内。这些区域生态系统的大气输出--气候预测--也可用作区域气候影响的其他详细研究的边界条件，例如空气质量和水资源(数量和质量)。总体而言，这项研究的科学评估和预测将使当地利益攸关方以及国家和国际政策制定者能够就缓解和适应战略--特别是与保护受到极端环境威胁的自然和管理生态系统相关的战略--作出更明智的决定。

Our nation's natural and managed ecosystems are essential to public livelihood and its sustainable future. Extreme climate and weather events impose a substantial risk to ecosystem productivity, as such events are the most damaging and costly. Further increases in the frequency, strength, and/or duration of extreme events under altered environmental conditions may also result in irrecoverable damages to ecosystems. Therefore, it is of critical importance to comprehensively observe, understand, document, and predict ecosystems' response and resiliency to extreme environmental conditions and the extent to which irreversible thresholds may be crossed as a result of changes in the Earth's natural and human systems. Improved performance in predictive models is achieved only through observational evidence of ecosystem behavior under the full range of environmental conditions. The current suite of ecologic, meteorological, and hydrologic observations combined with the nation's next-generation National Ecologic Observation Network (NEON) allow an exciting opportunity to enable new analyses that comprehensively span the diverse types of ecosystems across our nation. This study undertakes coordinated calibration, evaluation, enhancement, and experimentation with a hierarchy of predictive tools that includes: models representing the field-scale mechanisms of ecosystems; a high-resolution regional ecosystem-climate model; as well as a global integrated assessment model of the linked earth-human systems. Through these, region-specific thresholds in the productivity, response, and resiliency of ecosystems governed by human-altered shifts in weather and climate extremes as well as land use, which pose severe implications for ecosystem services, will be identified.The testing and evaluation of ecosystem models against the NEON observations will identify the critical model capabilities required to faithfully predict ecosystem response to extreme conditions. Under the auspice of potential climate and environmental change through the end of this century, projections with regional and global human-earth systems models will also allow for a risk-based assessment of ecologic change and resiliency. This is possible through the ability to run these models across the range of plausible human emissions and the climate/ecologic response. The atmospheric outputs of these regional ecosystem-climate projections could then also be used as boundary conditions for other detailed studies of regional climate impacts - such as air quality and water resources (quantity and quality). Overall, the scientific assessments and predictions from this study will enable local stakeholders as well as national and international policymakers to make more informed decisions regarding mitigation and adaptation strategies - particularly those that are relevant to the protection of natural and managed ecosystems threatened by extreme environments.