Английский язык

Humans have come to play a powerful and expanding role as agents of environmental change and human activities are also substantially impacted by global-scale environmental changes. The current and future state of the Earth system is inexorably linked to human activities.

The United States, through the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), along with other nations, supports the research needed to characterize and understand global environmental change and to provide answers to important questions about the Earth system (including human activities), how it is changing, and the implications of global change for society and the natural ecosystems and managed resource systems on which society depends.

To assess the state of scientific information and identify research needs, the United States participates actively in national and international evaluations of the scientific understanding of global change issues. These assessments bring together large numbers of scientists representing a broad spectrum of research specialties and viewpoints to prepare carefully and widely reviewed reports that encompass the range of qualified scientific findings and perspectives.

This follows on 1994 scientific assessments of ozone depletion organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which found that the “conclusion that anthropogenic chlorine and bromine compounds, coupled with surface chemistry on natural polar stratospheric particles, are the cause of polar ozone depletion has been further strengthened”.

Since its establishment as a Presidential Initiative in the FY90 budget, the USGCRP has been responsible for directing Federal support for scientific research to address key uncertainties about global environmental change and the Earth system.

The goal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program is:

· To observe and document changes in the Earth system

· To understand what changes are occurring and why

· To improve predictions of future global change

· To analyze the environmental, socioeconomic, and health consequences of global change

· To support state-of-the-science assessments of global environmental change issues.

The USGCRP budget request for Fy97 is 1.73$ billion, with 10 agencies participating in the program. A few agencies support research on the broad range of scientific areas relating to the global environment, while others support research that has a more mission-orientated focus. The programmatic contributions of the USGCRP agencies are coordinated and closely matched to agency missions and areas of expertise.

In response to requests from the Subcommittee on Global Change Research and from Congressional committee chairs in both the House and Senate, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has been conducting a major program review of the UCGCRP.

In a September 1995 interim report, the NRC concluded, “The scientific and societal motivations of the program remain compelling, and the USGCRP should be aggressively pursued.” The report stated that, “A great deal of extremely high-quality science that is recognized worldwide for its excellence and leadership has resulted from the USGCRP.”

The NRC also made a number of recommendations. The Subcommittee on Global Change Research and the USGCRP participating agencies have been moving aggressively to respond to the NRC recommendations on program integration and strategic research directions.

Key Global Change Environmental Science Issues

In response to the development of scientific understanding and research capabilities that has occurred over the life of the program, the USGCRP is moving to focus research efforts on what the NRC has termed “…priority issues in four mature areas of Earth system science that are of great scientific and practical importance.” These priority environmental science issues follow:

1) Seasonal to Interannual Climate Variability, with the goal of obtaining a predictive understanding and the skills to produce forecasts of short-term climate fluctuations and to apply these predictions to problems of social and economic development in the United States and abroad.

Progress toward this goal will provide improved predictions that can, among other direct benefits, help farmers maintain their agricultural productivity in spite of extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods, help water resource managers to ensure reliable water deliveries and optimal reservoir levels, help in planning fishery harvests, and help foresters allocate resources effectively to safeguard forests (and the public) from fire during droughts.