Integrated Responses to Biodiversity and Climate Change
Introduction
As part of a larger international effort, the University of Notre Dame's Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative and the University of Michigan's Institute for Global Change Biology (IGCB) are partnering to create and support interdisciplinary teams focused on interactions between biodiversity and climate change.
Program Background
Driven by the recognition that scientific syntheses and subsequent actions based on the best available knowledge are necessary to solve complex problems, JTS and IGCB are supporting interdisciplinary teams of Notre Dame researchers, University of Michigan researchers, and their external colleagues to synthesize knowledge linking the biodiversity and climate changes crises. Synthesis working groups are research infrastructures that enable the development of knowledge from heterogeneous information, data, theories, and perspectives. In this distinctive position on the world research scene, synthesis science has been at the forefront of knowledge in critical areas of environmental sustainability.
Program Goals
The JTS-IGCB synthesis working groups will focus on the nexus of climate, ecological, and social sciences to shed light on how the two crises of biodiversity loss and climate change interact and affect each other, and provide information and models to engage and respond to these enormous challenges of our time. We aspire to facilitate and encourage joint interactions between the teams working on different aspects of the same overarching topic, and will collaborate with other synthesis centers to provide opportunities for sharing learning between working groups.