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Abstract
Terrestrial ecosystems regulate Earth's climate through water, energy, and biogeochemical transformations. Despite a key role in regulating the Earth system, terrestrial ecology has historically been underrepresented in the Earth system models (ESMs) that are used to understand and project global environmental change. Ecology and Earth system modeling must be integrated for scientists to fully comprehend the role of ecological systems in driving and responding to global change. Ecological insights can improve ESM realism and reduce process uncertainty, while ESMs offer ecologists an opportunity to broadly test ecological theory and increase the impact of their work by scaling concepts through time and space. Despite this mutualism, meaningfully integrating the two remains a persistent challenge, in part because of logistical obstacles in translating processes into mathematical formulas and identifying ways to integrate new theories and code into large, complex model structures. To help overcome this interdisciplinary challenge, we present a framework consisting of a series of interconnected stages for integrating a new ecological process or insight into an ESM. First, we highlight the multiple ways that ecological observations and modeling iteratively strengthen one another, dispelling the illusion that the ecologist's role ends with initial provision of data. Second, we show that many valuable insights, products, and theoretical developments are produced through sustained interdisciplinary collaborations between empiricists and modelers, regardless of eventual inclusion of a process in an ESM. Finally, we provide concrete actions and resources to facilitate learning and collaboration at every stage of data-model integration. This framework will create synergies that will transform our understanding of ecology within the Earth system, ultimately improving our understanding of global environmental change, and broadening the impact of ecological research.
Department
Soil Biogeochemistry and Microbial Ecology
Publication Date
9-20-2021
Journal Title
Global Change Biology
Publisher
Wiley
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Kyker-Snowman, E., Lombardozzi, D. L., Bonan, G. B., Cheng, S. J., Dukes, J. S., Frey, S. D., Jacobs, E. M., McNellis, R., Rady, J. M., Smith, N. G., Thomas, R. Q., Wieder, W. R., & Grandy, A. S. (2022). Increasing the spatial and temporal impact of ecological research: A roadmap for integrating a novel terrestrial process into an Earth system model. Global Change Biology, 28, 665–684. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15894
Rights
© 2021 The Authors.
Comments
This is an open access article published by Wiley in Global Change Biology in 2021, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15894