News

RFPs for Climate Change Research Due Out Soon
presented by Ken Davis 2/11/08

The National Institute for Climate Change Research (NICCR), funded by the Department of Energy, is seeking research proposals to assess the effects of climatic changes on inland terrestrial ecosystems.

About $500,000 is available for research projects for each of the next two years with the standard award for a single investigator about $125,000, according to Ken Davis, director of the NICCR’s Northeastern Regional Center (NERC) located at Penn State.

Davis gave an update on NERC at EESI’s February lunch meeting.

NICCR’s goal is to understand how climatic change affects ecosystems and specifically, how changes in temperature and precipitation affect ecosystems. NICCR-funded research focuses on:

Manipulative experiments to elicit responses of ecosystems to climatic change.
Analysis of existing data to predict future patterns in the geographic distribution of species as the result of climatic change.
Studies of the carbon and energy balance of terrestrial ecosystems to ascertain how altering the carbon cycle will affect regional climate.
Synthesis of experimental and observational data to better understand the effects of climatic change and improve predictive capabilities about those potential effects.

Related research at Penn State includes an NICCR-funded project underway on a plot in Stone Valley to document interactions of temperature and precipitation on the germination of tree species; new measurements (NSF support) of the carbon and energy balance of the forest ecosystem of the Stone Valley region; and carbon cycle data assimilation work funded by NICCR and NOAA.

NICCR supports four regional research centers—the others are at Michigan Tech, Duke and Northern Arizona universities—and one coastal center located at Tulane University. While the centers are regional, proposals can encompass more than one region.

Created in December 2004, NICCR was funded by Congress for five years. With the program beginning to wind down, Davis said indications are that research proposals targeting synthesis of existing data and observations or continuations of existing projects may fare the best in the next funding round. More information about NICCR-supported projects can be found on the center’s web site.

Information about NERC and the latest RFP—expected to be released any day—can be found at http://www.niccr.psu.edu. For more information, contact Davis at davis@meteo.psu.edu or Linda Decker, program administrator, at ldecker@psu.edu.

In addition to his role with NERC, Davis recently was appointed to co-chair the Science Steering Group of the North American Carbon Program (NACP, http://www.nacarbon.org).