Northern Eurasia, the largest landmass in the northern extratropics, accounts for ~20% of the global land area. However, little is known about how the biogeochemical cycles, energy and water cycles, and human activities specific to this carbon-rich, cold region interact with global climate. A major concern is that changes in the distribution of land-based life, as well as its interactions with the environment, may lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of accelerated regional and global warming. With this as its motivation, the Northern Eurasian Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) was formed in 2004 to better understand and quantify feedbacks between northern Eurasian and global climates. The first group of NEESPI projects has mostly focused on assembling regional databases, organizing improved environmental monitoring of the region, and studying individual environmental processes. That was a starting point to addressing emerging challenges in the region related to rapidly and simultaneously changing climate, environmental, and societal systems. More recently, the NEESPI research focus has been moving toward integrative studies, including the development of modeling capabilities to project the future state of climate, environment, and societies in the NEESPI domain. This effort will require a high level of integration of observation programs, process studies, and modeling across disciplines.
UCAR, NOAA/National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, St. Petersburg, Russia
Georgia Institute for Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho
Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio
USDA Forest Service, Arlington, Virginia
Aspen Global Change Institute, Aspen, Colorado
Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
National Institute for Environmental Sciences, Tsukuba, Japan
The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, Washington, D.C.
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska
Gamma Remote Sensing, Giimligen, Switzerland
University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire
Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
Forest Institute, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk, Russia
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
