Brown University's Environmental Change Initiative (ECI) and the Watson Institute's Global Environmental Program will jointly sponsor a conference from September 15 to 16 titled the "Frontiers of Environmental Change Research: Climate Change Drivers, Impacts, and Policy." It will explore emerging new directions within climate change research and will assess areas in which Brown University could make substantial new contributions to current and future studies.
Grappling with the global climate change problem requires drawing on a wide range of disciplines. In the broadest terms, the climate change issue can be described as the human activity (primarily energy and land use) that leads to emissions of various gases and aerosols and results in changes in atmospheric composition, which in turn drive changes in the climate
that could negatively affect ecosystems and society. Thus, climate change researchers must deal with a disparate set of factors, including the socio-economic forces driving energy and land use; biogeochemical cycles, atmospheric chemistry, and other components of the climate system; the sensitivity of ecosystems and various economic sectors to changes in climate; and domestic and international policy processes. In addition, formal methods of integrating knowledge from across these areas are strongly needed in order to address policy relevant questions.
