Related Research

In addition to focused global change research, NSF conducts contributing research on many topics, including laboratory and field studies of the atmosphere and the factors that affect it; the physical, chemical, and biological dynamics of ocean waters; the composition, structure, and history of ocean floors; geophysical, hydrological, geological, and geochemical processes operating at and below the Earth's surface; the generation, transport, and fate of chemicals in natural systems; global environmental history; and data management for scientific research and modeling.

Many NSF-sponsored research projects examine interactions that link ecosystems and human activities with other factors, of which climate variability and change are only one specific set. As a result, much of NSF's support for research that relates to the consequences of global change does not focus specifically on global change but falls into the "contributing research" category instead. For example, data-collection activities and field experiments at many of the nearly two dozen Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites provide insights into the ways that different ecosystems respond to short- and longer term changes in climate, but they provide equally valuable perspectives on ecological responses to other kinds of environmental changes. In a similar way, NSF provides support for research projects that examine economic, cultural, and behavioral responses to different conditions that include, but are not restricted to, global environmental change. Especially noteworthy are studies of the ways that people and institutions anticipate and respond to risks, because risk assessment and risk management invariably entail making trade-offces among a large number of factors.