A biome is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. A biome encompasses multiple ecosystems within its boundaries. It can also comprise a variety of habitats.
Biomass is the mass of living biological organisms in a given area or ecosystem at a given time. Biomass can refer to species biomass, which is the mass of one or more species, or to community biomass, which is the mass of all species in the community. It can include microorganisms, plants or animals. The mass can be expressed as the average mass per unit area, or as the total mass in the community.
The Global Scenario Group (GSG) was an international, interdisciplinary body convened in 1995 by the Tellus Institute and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to develop scenarios for world development in the twenty-first century. Further development of the Great Transition scenarios has been carried on by the Great Transition Initiative (GTI).
FLUXNET is a global network of micrometeorological tower sites that use eddy covariance methods to measure the exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy between the biosphere and atmosphere. FLUXNET is a global 'network of regional networks' that serves to provide an infrastructure to compile, archive and distribute data for the scientific community. The most recent FLUXNET data product, FLUXNET2015, is hosted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) and is publicly available for download. Currently there are over 1000 active and historic flux measurement sites.
Gary Wynn Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. He holds a PhD from Yale University.
A Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) is a computer program that simulates shifts in potential vegetation and its associated biogeochemical and hydrological cycles as a response to shifts in climate. DGVMs use time series of climate data and, given constraints of latitude, topography, and soil characteristics, simulate monthly or daily dynamics of ecosystem processes. DGVMs are used most often to simulate the effects of future climate change on natural vegetation and its carbon and water cycles.
John A. Gamon is a Canadian-American scientist currently working in Nebraska. His work using terrestrial vegetation spectral signatures to discern plant productivity and biodiversity has had a significant impact in the discipline of remote sensing, having published 95 papers and receiving 7,613 citations as of 2017. Gamon pioneered the use of the relationship between leaf xanthophyll cycle pigment content and spectral reflectance to improve satellite monitoring of photosynthesis. Gamon's seminal work resulted in the development of the Photochemical Reflectance Index (PRI). He trained under Nobel Peace Prize laureate Christopher Field.
James J. McCarthy was a Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from February 2008 to February 2009.
Planetary boundaries are a framework to describe limits to the impacts of human activities on the Earth system. Beyond these limits, the environment may not be able to self-regulate anymore. This would mean the Earth system would leave the period of stability of the Holocene, in which human society developed. The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions, especially those of industrialized societies since the Industrial Revolution, have become the main driver of global environmental change. According to the framework, "transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental-scale to planetary-scale systems."
Berrien Moore III is the former director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire and the founding director of Climate Central. In June 2010, he accepted a set of linked positions at the University of Oklahoma: Vice President, Weather & Climate Programs, Director, National Weather Center, and Dean, College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences. He holds the Chesapeake Energy Corporation Chair in Climate Studies. Moore was a coordinating lead author of the final chapter of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organisation that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Among his other honors are the 2007 Dryden Lectureship in Research from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. Moore holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Virginia.
Christopher B. Field is an American scientist and researcher, who has contributed to the field of climate change. The author of more than 200 scientific publications, Field's research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. His work includes major field experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change, integrative studies on the global carbon cycle, and assessments of impacts of climate change on agriculture. Field's work with models includes studies on the global distribution of carbon sources and sinks, and studies on environmental consequences of expanding biomass energy.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United States former vice president, Al Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".
Arturo Villavicencio is an Ecuadorian environmental researcher. He was nominated by Denmark in 1995 for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and contributed to its fourth assessment report. The work of the IPCC, including the contributions of many scientists, was recognised by the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and Al Gore.
The carbon cycle is an essential part of life on Earth. About half the dry weight of most living organisms is carbon. It plays an important role in the structure, biochemistry, and nutrition of all living cells. Living biomass holds about 550 gigatons of carbon, most of which is made of terrestrial plants (wood), while some 1,200 gigatons of carbon are stored in the terrestrial biosphere as dead biomass.
In earth science, global surface temperature is calculated by averaging the temperatures over sea and land.
Dr. C. Vernon Cole was a soil scientist known primarily for his work on nutrient cycling in agroecosystems. He was a member of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment report, and the lead author of Chapter 23 “Agricultural Options for Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Professor John David Woods, CBE is a British oceanographer.
Pete Smith is Professor of Soils and Global change at the University of Aberdeen where he directs the Scottish Climate Change Centre of Expertise, ClimateXChange.
Philippe Ciais is a researcher of the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE), the climate change research unit of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL). He is a physicist working on the global carbon cycle of planet Earth, climate change, ecology and geosciences.
Opha Pauline Dube or Pauline Dube is a Botswanan environmental scientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Botswana. She co-authored the IPCC's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. She is one of fifteen scientists creating the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report for the United Nations.
