Grand Challenges in Understanding the Interplay of Climate and Land Changes
Author
Liu, ShuguangBond-Lamberty, Ben
Boysen, Lena R.
Ford, James D.
Fox, Andrew

Gallo, Kevin
Hatfield, Jerry
Henebry, Geoffrey M.
Huntington, Thomas G.
Liu, Zhihua
Loveland, Thomas R.
Norby, Richard J.
Sohl, Terry
Steiner, Allison L.
Yuan, Wenping
Zhang, Zhao
Zhao, Shuqing
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Sch Nat Resources & EnvironmIssue Date
2017-04
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNIONCitation
Grand Challenges in Understanding the Interplay of Climate and Land Changes 2017, 21 (2):1 Earth InteractionsJournal
Earth InteractionsRights
© 2017 American Meteorological Society.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Half of Earth's land surface has been altered by human activities, creating various consequences on the climate and weather systems at local to global scales, which in turn affect a myriad of land surface processes and the adaptation behaviors. This study reviews the status and major knowledge gaps in the interactions of land and atmospheric changes and present 11 grand challenge areas for the scientific research and adaptation community in the coming decade. These land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC)-related areas include 1) impacts on weather and climate, 2) carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, 3) biospheric emissions, 4) the water cycle, 5) agriculture, 6) urbanization, 7) acclimation of biogeochemical processes to climate change, 8) plant migration, 9) land-use projections, 10) model and data uncertainties, and, finally, 11) adaptation strategies. Numerous studies have demonstrated the effects of LCLUC on local to global climate and weather systems, but these putative effects vary greatly in magnitude and even sign across space, time, and scale and thus remain highly uncertain. At the same time, many challenges exist toward improved understanding of the consequences of atmospheric and climate change on land process dynamics and services. Future effort must improve the understanding of the scale-dependent, multifaceted perturbations and feedbacks between land and climate changes in both reality and models. To this end, one critical cross-disciplinary need is to systematically quantify and better understand measurement and model uncertainties. Finally, LCLUC mitigation and adaptation assessments must be strengthened to identify implementation barriers, evaluate and prioritize opportunities, and examine how decisionmaking processes work in specific contexts.Note
6 month embargo; Published Online: 28 March 2017ISSN
1087-3562Version
Final published versionSponsors
U.S. Geological Survey Land Change Science Program (GEMS Modeling); Earth System Modeling Program of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science; National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NNX12AM89G]; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental ResearchAdditional Links
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/EI-D-16-0012.1ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1175/EI-D-16-0012.1