Systems approaches in global change and biogeochemistry research

Smith, Pete and Albanito, Fabrizio and Bell, Madeleine and Bellarby, Jessica and Blagodatskiy, Sergey and Datta, Arindam and Dondini, Marta and Fitton, Nuala and Flynn, Helen and Hastings, Astley and Hillier, Jon and Jones, Edward O. and Kuhnert, Matthias and Nayak, Dali R. and Pogson, Mark and Richards, Mark and Sozanska-Stanton, Gosia and Wang, Shifeng and Yeluripati, Jagadeesh B. and Bottoms, Emily and Brown, Chris and Farmer, Jenny and Feliciano, Diana and Hao, Cui and Robertson, Andy and Vetter, Sylvia and Wong, Hon Man and Smith, Jo (2012) Systems approaches in global change and biogeochemistry research. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 367 (1586). pp. 311-321. ISSN 0080-4622

Abstract

Systems approaches have great potential for application in predictive ecology. In this paper, we present a range of examples, where systems approaches are being developed and applied at a range of scales in the field of global change and biogeochemical cycling. Systems approaches range from Bayesian calibration techniques at plot scale, through data assimilation methods at regional to continental scales, to multi-disciplinary numerical model applications at country to global scales. We provide examples from a range of studies and show how these approaches are being used to address current topics in global change and biogeochemical research, such as the interaction between carbon and nitrogen cycles, terrestrial carbon feedbacks to climate change and the attribution of observed global changes to various drivers of change. We examine how transferable the methods and techniques might be to other areas of ecosystem science and ecology