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Abstract Terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems regulate climate at local to global scales through exchanges of energy and matter with the atmosphere and assist with climate change mitigation through nature‐based climate solutions. Climate science is no longer a study of the physics of the atmosphere and oceans, but also the ecology of the biosphere. This is the promise of Earth system science: to transcend academic disciplines to enable study of the interacting physics, chemistry, and biology of the planet. However, long‐standing tension in protecting, restoring, and managing forest ecosystems to purposely improve climate evidences the difficulties of interdisciplinary science. For four centuries, forest management for climate betterment was argued, legislated, and ultimately dismissed, when nineteenth century atmospheric scientists narrowly defined climate science to the exclusion of ecology. Today's Earth system science, with its roots in global models of climate, unfolds in similar ways to the past. With Earth system models, geoscientists are again defining the ecology of the Earth system. Here we reframe Earth system science so that the biosphere and its ecology are equally integrated with the fluid Earth to enable Earth system prediction for planetary stewardship. Central to this is the need to overcome an intellectual heritage to the models that elevates geoscience and marginalizes ecology and local land knowledge. The call for kilometer‐scale atmospheric and ocean models, without concomitant scientific and computational investment in the land and biosphere, perpetuates the geophysical view of Earth and will not fully provide the comprehensive actionable information needed for a changing climate.
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Data Science for Earth: An Earth Day Report
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Recycling is not just for plastic. Did you know that the Earth recycles? Recycling happens because the outer part of the planet is made up of large moving pieces of rock. Some of these pieces, called tectonic plates, sink deep down into the Earth. The deeper they go, the more heat and pressure they experience. This causes chemical reactions, including melting of the minerals that make up the rocks. Elements and water trapped inside the melting minerals are released and erupt from volcanoes, returning to the surface. The Earth has recycled! In this article, we present new research on a mineral called lawsonite. Lawsonite only forms in plates that dive into the Earth. Lawsonite has returned to the Earth’s surface in a few rare places where we can collect and analyze it. The composition of elements inside the lawsonite mineral help us understand the deep part of the Earth recycling system.more » « less
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3400051.3400055
