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.

How can the human dimensions of the Earth system be appropriately factored into our understanding of the Earth system, including questions of meaning, value, interpretation, and identity?

Put simply, understanding the biogeophysics of the Earth system is incomplete without understanding the changes humans bring to bear within it and why humans choose to make those changes. This incompleteness impacts our ability to explain why changes in the Earth system happen as well as to design appropriate policy responses to those changes.

How can we improve the decision processes that affect the ecosystem services for human well being?

Day by day it is becoming more evident what has been obvious: if we dont answer this question it will not matter how much more we learn about the workings of the earth system

How can we better monitor, model, and predict the interdependent impacts of alternative strategies for managing the global environment in support of future decision making?

Significant changes are already under way in the Earth’s environment at local, regional, and global scales. Increasing attention is being given to proposals for mitigating or modifying human drivers of environmental change, as well as to alternative strategies for adaptation and environmental management. These policy alternatives could themselves have important impacts on the environment and on human activities and welfare, and may also have unexpected or synergistic interactions, e.g., mitigation strategies that increase or shift vulnerabilities to climate change. The Earth systems research community will be increasingly called upon to assess the potential benefits and risks of specific options and of alternative strategies (e.g., geoengineering vs. adaptation). A particular concern is the potential for conflicting approaches to be adopted by different nations, groups of nations, or other stakeholders. It is essential to start now to develop the data, models, tools, and strategies needed to support better and more rapid decision making with regard to management of the global environment, even in the face of continuing scientific uncertainties and incomplete information.

How do we design multilevel institutions for the Earth system?

“Think locally, act globally”, as a slogan, has been around for a long time. But it needs to be operationalized through new institutional arrangements that connect from local to global. Here we are talking about institutions that are multilevel (rather than multilateral). That is, the concern is not the fragmented or overlapping nature of institutions. Rather, the concern is about finding ways in which local – state/provincial – national – regional – international levels of discourse, knowledge co-production, and decision-making can be connected. This imperative follows from the fact that the Earth system is not “flat” but hierachical or multilevel. Hence the theory of complex adaptive systems tells us that there is no one “correct” level at which the system can be managed. Information and perspectives from all levels are equally important and valid in dealing with the problems of the Earth system. Co-management arrangements in some countries connect the local to the national, but even these face obstacles, as nation states have historically resisted sharing decision-making powers with other levels, both local and international.

The Arctic Council, with eight member countries, has come closest to using information and observations from all levels in its 2005 Arctic Climate Change Impact Assessment report (http://www.acia.uaf.edu). However, there are no examples in the environment and resources area of truly multilevel institutions that connect the local to the global, and that is a big challenge in managing Earth systems.

What are the most significant changes that could potentially impact the earth systems and how does climate change rates among them?

Currently the earth is witnessing a wide number of changes; we need to prioritize these changes in terms of their impacts in order to prioritize solutions.

How fast is the earth system changing is important to decide before it is too late? Information on when and where is also important for making timely and effective decisions

What are the regional expressions of climate change?

Over the last decades and years, the question of climate change attribution has been resolved scientifically and we have made good progress in constraining the magnitude of greenhouse warming at a global scale. In contrast, the regional expression of climate change is still poorly understood, hence providing a vague physical basis for foresighted political decisions and socioeconomic planning.

Gaps to fill in our knowledge on regional climate relate to regional trends and magnitudes of monsoon precipitation, drought in subtropical regions of both hemispheres, Arctic warming (including melt of sea ice and Greenland ice), prevalent climate modes and seasonality in mid-latitude regions, etc.

Focused research over the next decade should be able to constrain many of the uncertainties about the regionally relevant aspects of climate change. Such research needs to address regional climate dynamics across past and present timescales, based on targeted, high-resolution climate modeling and the generation and analysis of detailed paleo-climate reconstructions and climate-observation datasets. Without better-founded expectations about regional changes, any research on global change impacts and adaptation measures will be built on sand and remain speculative.