This research has demonstrated the sensitivity of terrestrial ecosystems to local variations of the radiation budget, and has highlighted their possible role in regional climate change. = by regional ecosystems has also been supported. By including appendices with complete listings of NIGEC publications, principal investigators and participating institutions, this report may also serve as a useful comprehensive documentation of NIGEC. It is the mid-latitude forests, however, that have received more attention in NIGEC than any other specific ecosystem, and NIGEC's initiation more » of and participation in the AmeriFlux program, network of carbon flux measurement sites in North American old-growth forests, is generally considered to be its most significant single accomplishment. NIGEC's research has demonstrated large regional differences in the atmospheric carbon exchange budgets of croplands and forests, that there are significant variations of this exchange on diurnal, synoptic, seasonal and interannual time scales due to atmospheric variability (including temperature, precipitation and cloudiness), and that management practices and past history have predominant effects in grasslands and croplands.
NIGEC's research presents important evidence on the impacts of climate variability and change, and in some cases adaptability, for a broad range of both managed and unmanaged ecosystems, and has thereby documented significant regional issues on the environmental responses to climate change. The overall vision of NIGEC may be stated as the performance of academic research on the regional interactions between ecosystems and climate. The program's purpose was to support academic research on environmental change in regions of the country that had historically received relatively little federal funding. An overview of the NIGEC program from its beginnings provides a description and evaluation of the program's vision, strategy and major accomplishments. Research conducted by the six NIGEC Regional Centers during recent years is reported.
0 kommentar(er)
