Issue of resilience of our Oceans vis-a-vis climate and geosphere/biosphere changes, as all sort of pressures (natural and anthropogenic) are affecting today the Oceans Realm? How much resilient our Oceans will be for the next coming decades?

Important issue as oceans constitute more than 2/3 of our planet.
Do we have good models of prediction to assist decison-makers in their planning of oceans management and governance?

What changes in policies (global to local) and human behavior will most strongly reduce human pressures on the planet’s life support systems, and how can the scientific community influence their implementation?

Humanity has perhaps a couple of decades to radically reshape the relationship between society and the biosphere. This requires research on human perceptions and motivations as well as communications between scientists and society. Very little global change research is focused on these critical issues which will determine whether more basic research on global change will have any impact at all.

Is there a critical global temperature rise at which the biosphere will switch from being a net sink of CO2 to being a net source?

Current plans to mitigate climate change assume that reducing anthropogenic emissions of CO2 will eventually stop the increase in atmospheric concentrations. There is concern, however, that rising temperatures could trigger changes in the biosphere such that the biosphere becomes a net source. If such a critical temperature exists, exceding it would have catastrophic consequences.

In hierarchical terms, what human-driven forces can potentially trigger abrupt transitions and non-linear response in biosphere? What critical thresholds and feed-mechanisms are involved and how do they operate?

We need to improve our understanding about still unknown functional mechanisms operating at the global Earth system scale that can be involved in unpredictable catastrophic events. Such knowledge is necessary to predict, prevent, adapt to and eventually manage unexpected consequences of human action on global change.

What is the role of the biosphere in regulating climate, and which systems and processes are most influential?

Climate models tend to include interactions with the biosphere quite generally, yet the ecological and evolutionary responses and feedbacks are potentially very significant but hard to predict. An obstacle is that we probably don’t know enough about the processes to develop better models until more relevant basic research has been undertaken.

What model of collective action has proven to be the most effective in harmonizing social development with the functioning of natural systems?

Much is known already about anthropogenic change in natural systems and the consequences of such change for societies, both positive and negative. The scale of the role of human beings in the functioning of the Earth system is such that, barring cataclysmic events, it can be reasonably expected that the future evolution of the biosphere will depend on this particular species. It will require a conscious, collective effort by societies to modify certain behaviours to be up to this challenge.

On the other hand, much research has been made in economics, sociology and anthropology about individual and collective behaviour. But little research seems to have gone into understanding and identifying which models, systems, institutions, norms or other forms of organizing collective action result in a social development that recognizes human systems as part of a larger natural system, and how such development harmonizes these two.
This question should be addressed in conjunction with the question (already posted) What factors determine the resilience of the full set of interacting ecosystem services that support human well-being and allow for adaptation to a changing environment? As the Millennium Assessment showed, the main reason why societies change natural systems (of which they are part) is the search for food, fuel, fibers and other ecosystem services. These changes have reached a planetary scale, posing serious risks for all systems (natural and social) involved. Hence, the two most important questions that need to be answered as soon as possible are: (i) what are the limits of natural systems from the human point of view (the question about resilience stated above), and (ii) what can we do as a species to sustain our development (the question about collective action proposed here).
The main obstacles in answering this question are two: (1) it requires interdisciplinary research, and (2) it has strong political and ideological implications. This latter difficulty requires a careful design of the research process.

Current trajectory of human action is not sustainable at a global scale: how can scientific understanding of complex systems and human perturbations devise sustainable development pathways across the scientific, policy and resource management divide, particularly at the regional level where most decisions are taken?

During the last 50 years the human population has risen from to 2,5 to over 6 billion. The use of land, water, minerals and other natural resources has increased almost ten-fold over the last two hundred years and approximately 50% of the ice-free land surface has now been significantly modified by humans and most of the rest is managed for human purposes. This phenomenon, which has obvious implications, creates the need to study the interactions, which occur on different temporal and spatial scales, affecting the biosphere and which are particularly susceptible to human actions, especially the efforts to provide a growing human population with food, energy, shelter and employment.

A global change research perspective which places primary emphasis on the global scale often misses a vast amount of work, frequently done under other guises, which is directly relevant to the study of global change phenomena. Such work is crucial for understanding the underlying processes which when aggregated constitute global change. Ultimately global change research will provide much of the underlying scientific understanding of complex systems and human perturbations that is required to devise sustainable development pathways at regional level. The drive for sustainability – the desire to make the development of the growing ‘human enterprise’ more compatible with the natural evolution of the Earth system – gives global change research its most fundamental rationale and connection to applications in policy and resource management. Where global change research is weak – application of the work through interaction with the policy and resource management sectors, sustainable development science is strong; and where sustainable development work is often weak – understanding the fundamental dynamics of complex environmental systems, global change research is strong. Clearly, the two fields of enquiry should work in much closer harmony in the future.

What are earth system thresholds that are sensitive to biotic impoverishment?

Through the predominant period of the rise of humanity as the dominant species (the Holocene), earth system properties have been relatively benign with respect to the constraints within which the current biosphere remains viable. We are distracted by climate change to the point that Heinrich events, Dansgaard-Oeschger events, and the Bølling-Allerød transition draw us away from the more basic scientific issue as to why climate remains largely within boundary conditions conducive to life on Earth. It is also possible that the question of global biotic thresholds is mistakenly assumed to be some form of Gaia-Hypothesis like thinking, a topic which has some strong supporters, but is largely unpopular among many scientists. Because there is likely to be an immense suffering in the face of climate change, it would be inappropriate to suggest that such questions should not dominate our attention – they deserve substantial, immediate attention. Climate change research, however, in its current form, incorporates enormous “black boxes” and this is not the best science. GCM models tax even the best super computers, but until such models contain hundreds of ecosystem types, each made up of hundreds of functional species types, and contain key interactions among species and their environment, we are avoiding the true challenge before us – to understand Earth systems in its entirety – physical, chemical, and biological with spatial and temporal accuracy all coupled to social systems.

The Millennium Assessment achieved an unprecedented consensus among natural and social scientists from around the world declaring that the most pervasive environmental problems we face are caused by the massive spending down of natural capital – our biodiversity and our natural resources. Thirty years ago no one might have imagined we would have multi-million dollar, international efforts and intergovernmental panels seeking to understand the global carbon cycle and its relationship to climate using the most advanced research methods and techniques ever developed. Yet, the scientific foundation for this endeavor can be traced back to Arrhenius in 1896. To wait a similar period to build upon the Millennium Assessment’s findings would leave us facing problems in the future that were readily addressed today.

Given rates of local and global extinction, tt is difficult to imagine any challenge greater and more urgent than identifying earth system thresholds sensitive to biotic impoverishment.

Do diesel particles interfere with insect tracheoles ?

A reason for the decline of insects in urban and semi-urban environments might be very simple. The massive number of diesel particles produced in our high streets may be a human health risk – but the size of the particles is almost exactly the size of insect breathing tubules…… Very simple to measure.

Pr Michael Spedding,
Chairman NC-IUPHAR,
Experimental Sciences
Institute of Research Servier
11 Rue des Moulineaux
92150 Suresnes
France
michael.spedding@fr.netgrs.com

What are the Global changes induced by anthropogenic activities and their effect in Subsurface (3-5m below the surface) Biosphere?

It is a well known fact that there are three components viz. Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Lithosphere. At the intersection of these three the fourth one i.e. Biosphere is evolved. The new perspective of Earth System Science recognises that they all are inter-related to each other. Any global change in any one of the component will leave a clear imprint on the other. We humans are part of Biosphere as most intelligent species on earth should take responsibility for the changes by anthropogenic activities. It is most important Question to know the effects of anthropogenic changes.

The very thin layer of earth i.e.3-5m below the surface is very important layer as it supports the life in our Earth in one or another way. Any type of changes due to anthropogenic activities should be taken into consideration. It is well known fact that now human beings have evolved as a new geological agent to modify all the four spheres of earth system as the accessibility of human has increased due to development of technology.