How can local and regional environmental changes be scaled accurately and effectively to enhance the assessment of global changes, and vice-versa? How can we enhance the applicability of global predictions of biodiversity loss, water scarcity, climate change etc. to local and regional decision-making?

Environmental change occurs at varying temporal and spatial scales. Therefore it is imperative we understand how to utilize existing models and scientific understanding to create realistic predictions of biophysical thresholds and environmental consequences that governments and communities can utilize and comprehend. Furthermore, we need to understand how to relate the mitigation, adaptation, and conservation policies of a given locality to the Earth system. Knowledge of how to effectively scale human decisions and environmental change will significantly aid our ability in generating tangible action towards cooperative solutions.

One comment

1. erisman says:

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   Linking the scales to understand the (human induced) changes is one of the major challenges for the future. The world is getting smaller every day a.o. through globalisation. The well known example in meteorology of the butterfly in Hongkong that eventually creates a high-pressure area over Scandinavia by a powerfull stroke of its wings, shows how small the world can be. Understanding the processes on the micro-scale in connection to the global scale is therefore a necessity and a major challenge. It will, however, enable us to understand the different feedbacks or cascading effects that is the result of our actions. We are far off from that level of understanding!