GRANDCHALLENGESINEARTHAND摘要.PDF

2000 Presidential Address: Grand Challenges in Earth and Environmental Sciences: Science, Stewardship, and Service for the Twenty-First Century Mary Lou Zoback, U.S. Geological Survey, MS 977, 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA INTRODUCTION GRAND CHALLENGES IN EARTH AND A measure of our future success as earth scientists will depend on our ability to help our global society find and implement ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE effective solutions to environmental problems. In its most inclusive sense, environmental science could be considered So what are the big environmental problems, the grand to be “the” earth science. As used here, environmental challenges of the coming decades? Here are six, characterized science is defined to be a broadly integrative study of on a process level rather than a discipline or theme basis: processes occurring at or near the surface of Earth and involving interactions between the uppermost lithosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the biosphere (which Recognizing the signal within the natural variability includes mankind). It encompasses a broad range of traditional disciplines including biology, ecology, Defining mass flux and energy balance in natural systems meteorology, atmospheric sciences, hydrology, oceanography, Identifying feedback between natural and perturbed systems geology, and geophysics. Broad agreement exists within the scientific community that Determining proxies for biodiversity and ecosystem health we must employ an integrated systems approach to solving complex environmenta