NSF Award
2301655
Drought is increasingly becoming more common due to climate change, human water usage, and changes in land use. It has significant impacts on ecosystems and people's well-being, but there is still much we don't know about its effects on ecosystems and society. To deepen our understanding, Environmental Research Infrastructures (ERIs) have been established worldwide to collect critical data. These ERIs provide a unique opportunity to study how drought and other environmental changes impact nature across different regions and over extended periods of time. Six of these ERIs from different parts of the world have come together to form the Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (GERI). GERI's objective is to foster collaboration and information sharing among these networks. The aim is to establish effective communication pathways between different countries and cultures. This proposal builds upon their previous work and seeks to capitalize on this global collaboration in several ways: Firstly, this work aims to strengthen and expand international collaborations by working closely with other research networks. The second focus will be on studying drought on a global scale using the data shared across the partner ERIs. This approach will enable them to gain insights into how drought impacts ecosystems worldwide. Thirdly, this project seeks to accelerate scientific discoveries by bringing scientists and stakeholders from different countries together. Finally, we will train and support the next generation of researchers by organizing workshops and creating more opportunities for collaboration. Overall, this collaboration between research networks will contribute to a better understanding of the effects of drought on ecosystems and human life by facilitating the exchange of knowledge and data on a global scale.<br/><br/>Increasingly influenced by anthropogenic climate change, human water use, and expanding land-use change, drought is entering unfamiliar territory. Despite the influence of drought on ecosystem function, and human well-being, there are significant uncertainties in our understanding of the impacts of drought for ecosystems and humanity. Over the past decade, large Environmental Research Infrastructures (ERIs) have been implemented around the world to drive understanding of the responses of the biosphere to environmental change. These emergent ERIs now provide a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of ecological processes, such as drought, across continents, decades, and disciplinary boundaries. Against this backdrop, six ERIs from around the world have come together to establish an international network-to-network collaboration – the Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (GERI). GERI activities have focused on garnering support and establishing baseline pathways for communications across continents and cultures. This proposal expands upon previous activities to realize the power of global network to network collaborations by: (i) further developing and leveraging strategic international network-to-network collaborations via engaging new partners in Central America and continuing existing partnerships, (ii) demonstrating the utility of harmonized GERI data via a strategic initial focus on ecological drought at a global scale, (iii) accelerating scientific discovery by bringing together international stakeholders and researchers to guide the harmonization of these data and use them to advance knowledge, and (iv) preparing the next generation of researchers in this network-of-network approach via workshops, training, and enhanced opportunities for collaboration.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
