6.0 The Challenges Ahead
The boundaries between the traditionally distinct disciplines of atmospheric,
earth, and ocean sciences are being eroded as the understanding of the
Earth as a dynamic, integrated system improves. This important intellectual
driver must impact the way that GEO facilities are managed. Access to
investigators of all disciplines must be open and straightforward, and
opportunities for sharing of capabilities and sites between the Divisions
of GEO must be recognized.
The coordination of facility requirements with other Directorates within
NSF should be reviewed on a regular basis to determine whether opportunities
for new partnerships would enhance available capabilities. The technological
and instrumental challenges of recording long time series of environmental
and biological variables, and the development of improved capabilities
for the manipulation of biological materials in the natural environment
would be most efficiently tackled by cross-directorate programs for
development and support of new and innovative facilities.
Efforts to build new interagency partnerships must continue - many
of the new computational or observational facilities would require investments
that are beyond the resources of a single agency. Only through cooperative
efforts can these goals be realized. To an increasing degree, many required
capabilities are beyond the resources of the U.S. as a nation and the
essential value of international cooperation must continue to be acknowledged.
The next five years will see substantial change in the way geosciences
data are collected and processed. Disciplinary barriers will be further
eroded, data access will continue to revolutionize the way investigators
work together, and increasingly researchers will study dynamic Earth
processes remotely in near real-time. GEO must be prepared to manage
a rapid evolution in the observational and computational capabilities
that will be required to achieve the next series of exciting advances
in the understanding of our planet's natural system.
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